Lunt-Fontanne Theater (Formerly The Globe Theater)

History and architecture

The Lunt-Fontanne Theater survives today as one of the historic theaters that symbolize American theater for both New York and the nation. Built in 1910 as Charles Dillingham's Globe Theater, and designed by Carrere & Hastings, the Lunt-Fontanne is one of the oldest theaters surviving in the Broadway theater district.

Charles Dillingham, one of Broadway's top producers of musical comedies, had some 200 productions to his credit in a career spanning close to 40 years. The most memorable include Shaw's Man and Superman; Hip Hip Hooray, which introduced Anna Pavlova to American audiences; and Apple Blossoms, Fred and Adele Astaire's first American musical. Alone and in partnership with Florenz Ziegfeld, Dillingham also managed such top stars as Elsie Janis, Beatrice Lillie, Marilyn Miller, and Irene Castle. Dillingham built the Globe Theater (named after Shakespeare's) in 1910 to be his headquarters; today, renamed the Lunt-Fontanne, it survives as a monument to his major contribution to the history of Broadway.

Carrere & Hastings was among the most prominent architectural firms in America in the early decades of this century. Although best-known for such Beaux-Art style monuments as the New York Public Library, the firm also designed four New York theaters, including the unusually large and opulent New Theater on Central Park West (demolished). The Lunt-Fontanne Theater is the only one of Carrere & Hastings' theaters surviving today. Its handsome Beaux-Arts facade is a smaller but equally handsome version of their no longer extant New Theater.

For three quarters of a century the Lunt-Fontanne Theater has served as home to countless numbers of the plays, beginning with Charles Dillingham's productions, through which the Broadway theater has come to personify American theater. As such, it continues to help define the Broadway theater district, the largest and most famous concentration of legitimate stage theaters in the world.