Richard Rodgers Theatre

Stand on West Forty-Sixth Street for a moment and listen. Taxi horns, a delivery truck reversing, someone humming a show tune a little off-key. Then look up at the marquee. The lights run in neat rows above the doors, and the crowd under them shifts like a tide. Some people hold phones up to the glow. Others just wait. This block of Manhattan has a particular sound in the hour before curtain, and you are standing right in the middle of it.

This is the Richard Rodgers Theatre. It sits in the heart of the Theater District, a short walk from the noise and neon of Times Square, yet it feels slightly calmer here. The side streets of Broadway are where the real theatres live. Most of them are older than the glass towers around them. They are tucked between restaurants, stage doors and narrow lobbies, and this one is among the most famous addresses on the street today.

The building opened in 1925, during the boom years of the Roaring Twenties. Back then it carried a different name: Chanin's Forty-Sixth Street Theatre. Irwin Chanin was a young developer who later became known for some of the city's Art Deco skyscrapers. The architect was Herbert J. Krapp. If that name means nothing to you, it should. Krapp designed a remarkable share of the Broadway theatres you can still walk past today.

Here is the first detail most visitors miss. Chanin had an idea that was quietly radical for its time. In many theatres of the era, people with cheaper tickets entered through a separate side door and climbed stairs out of sight. Chanin disliked that. He wanted everyone, whatever they paid, to come in through the same main entrance. The seating was arranged so the balcony felt connected to the rest of the house. It was a small architectural choice with a clear social message.

Now look at the facade itself. It is built of brick and pale stone, with classical touches above the street level. It does not shout. Compare it with the bright, oversized advertising boards on the corners nearby. The old theatre front is more restrained, almost formal. The marquee and the show posters do the shouting, and the building simply holds them up, like a frame around a painting.

In 1987, New York City designated both the exterior and the interior of the theatre as official landmarks. That matters more than it sounds. Interior protection is less common, and it means the auditorium's historic character cannot simply be stripped out. Inside, the décor follows a classical style, with ornamental plaster and warm tones. Theatres like this one were designed to make an ordinary evening feel like an occasion.

The stage has a long and remarkable record. In 1950, the original production of Guys and Dolls opened here, with its gamblers and missionaries and that famous floating crap game. In the 1950s came Damn Yankees, a musical about a baseball fan who makes a deal with the devil. In the 1960s, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying played this house. These were not minor shows. They helped define what the American musical became.

Then, in 1975, the original production of Chicago opened here. It was choreographed and directed by Bob Fosse, whose sharp, angular dance style is still copied today. Many people know Chicago from its later revival, which has run for decades elsewhere on Broadway. Fewer realise that the story of murder, fame and jazz first played on this very stage. That is the second surprise of this block... the past is layered under the present.

In 1990, the theatre received its current name. It honours Richard Rodgers, one of the great composers of the American stage. With the lyricist Lorenz Hart, he wrote songs that became jazz standards. Later, with Oscar Hammerstein the second, he created Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music. It is hard to overstate his influence. Many of the melodies you know from old films began as his music for Broadway.

And then came a new chapter. In 2008, Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights played here, a musical about a Latino neighbourhood in Upper Manhattan. A few years later, in 2015, his next show opened in the same theatre: Hamilton. It tells the life of Alexander Hamilton, one of the founders of the United States, through hip-hop, rhythm and blues and traditional show tunes. It became a cultural event far beyond the theatre world.

Think about that line of history for a second. A theatre built in the 1920s for a mostly traditional audience became the home of a show that cast actors of colour as the founding fathers. The building did not change much. The stories inside it changed enormously. Theatres are like that. The walls stay, and each generation brings its own voice onto the same boards.

If you are here before a performance, watch the street. Ushers prepare the doors. Groups gather for photographs beneath the marquee. Some people check their tickets again and again. After the show, the stage door area often fills with fans hoping for a signature or a quick wave. Even if you are not going in tonight, standing here for ten minutes shows you how much this street still runs on live performance.

Before you walk on, take one more look at the entrance. Remember Chanin's idea: one front door for everyone. Notice the people passing through it, or waiting beside it, from every corner of the city and the world. Listen again to the traffic, the voices, maybe a few notes of music drifting out. Then turn down Forty-Sixth Street, and see how many other old theatre fronts you can spot along the way.