Music Box Theatre

The story

Irving Berlin helped build his own Broadway house. Proposed in 1919 by producer Sam H. Harris specifically to host their collaborations, the Music Box Theatre opened in 1921 as a rare thing: a commercial theater conceived for a single songwriter's work. Architect C. Howard Crane dressed it in limestone with Palladian and neo-Georgian flourishes, hiding a fire-escape staircase behind a double-height colonnade. Inside, Adam-style detailing and two outwardly curved box seats give the 1,025-seat house an intimacy that persists. Today both the facade and auditorium are New York City landmarks, now operated by the Shubert Organization.