Neil Simon Theatre

The story

The name Alvin was never a person — it was a merger of two men: Alex Aarons and Vinton Freedley, who built this Broadway house in 1927 and stitched their first names together above the door. Herbert J. Krapp designed it in the Adam style, with arched windows, terracotta blocks, and two lobbies that still feel like an anteroom to something important. In 1983 it was renamed for playwright Neil Simon. Both the facade and the auditorium interior are now New York City landmarks — the building itself a kind of argument that a theater can outlast everyone whose name it ever wore.