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
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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
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