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The Westside Theatre is an
off-Broadway An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...
performance space at 407 West 43rd Street between
Ninth In music, a ninth is a compound interval consisting of an octave plus a second. Like the second, the interval of a ninth is classified as a dissonance in common practice tonality. Since a ninth is an octave larger than a second, its ...
and Tenth Avenues in the
Hell's Kitchen Hell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton, is a neighborhood on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is considered to be bordered by 34th Street (or 41st Street) to the south, 59th Street to the north, Eighth Avenue to the eas ...
neighborhood of
Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
, New York City. The building houses two auditoriums: the Upstairs Theatre, which seats 270, and the Downstairs Theatre, which features a
thrust stage In theatre, a thrust stage (also known as a platform stage or open stage) is one that extends into the audience on three sides and is connected to the backstage area by its upstage end. A thrust has the benefit of greater intimacy between performe ...
and has a seating capacity of 249. Formerly known as the Chelsea Theatre Center and the Westside Arts Theatre, the building was renovated in 1991.


History

The Romanesque Revival style building, designed by Henry Franklin Kilburn, was constructed in 1890 for the Second
German Baptist The Schwarzenau Brethren, the German Baptist Brethren, Dunkers, Dunkards, Tunkers, or sometimes simply called the German Baptists, are an Anabaptist group that dissented from Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed European state churches during t ...
Church, which it housed until the 1960s. The site was then occupied by various nightclubs until its establishment as a theatre in 1976."The 1889 2nd German Baptist Church – 407 West 43rd Street"
by Tom Miller and Alice Lum, ''Daytonian in Manhattan'', February 2, 2012


Selected past productions


Upstairs


Downstairs


References


Further reading


"Religion, Disco, Death and Drama – Westside Theatre's History Reads Like a Play in 3 Acts"
by Phil O'Brien, ''W42ST'', September 21, 2021


External links

* * * Off-Broadway theaters Theatres in Manhattan Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan Romanesque Revival architecture in New York City Theatres completed in 1976 Churches completed in 1890 Former Baptist church buildings in the United States Closed churches in New York City {{US-theat-struct-stub