Winter Garden Theatre

Stand on the Broadway pavement for a moment and listen. Taxi horns, the hiss of a bus braking, a street vendor calling out, and above it all the glow of the marquee spilling onto the sidewalk. Crowds drift past in both directions. Many of them never look twice at this doorway. Yet behind it sits one of the most storied stages in the American theatre: the Winter Garden.

Here is the first surprise. This building did not begin as a theatre at all. In the late nineteenth century, this stretch of Broadway was a place for carriages, stables and horse dealers. The structure that would become the Winter Garden started life as the American Horse Exchange. It was a large, open hall where horses were bought, sold and shown. The Vanderbilt family was connected to its building. Where you now picture chandeliers and velvet, picture straw, saddles and the smell of a working stable.

By the early twentieth century, the automobile was taking over the city, and the horse trade was fading. The Shubert brothers saw an opportunity. They were ambitious producers who were building a theatre empire across the country. They converted the old horse exchange into a playhouse, and the Winter Garden opened in 1911. The name was meant to suggest something light and pleasant, a sheltered garden in the middle of a cold city. Early decoration leaned into that idea, with a garden feel inside.

The horse exchange left a mark that you can still sense today. The auditorium is unusually wide for a Broadway house. It feels broader than it is deep, because it follows the footprint of that old exhibition hall. For the audience, this means many seats sit relatively close to the stage. For designers, it means a wide stage to fill. Performers often mention that the room feels large and intimate at the same time.

In its early decades, the Winter Garden became the home of the revue. A revue is a show built from songs, sketches and dance numbers, rather than one continuous story. The Shuberts staged a long series of these revues here. Audiences came for comedy, spectacle and, above all, stars. And no star shone brighter in this room than Al Jolson, the singer and showman who dominated popular entertainment in that era.

Jolson loved to be close to his audience. Theatre lore says that a runway was built out from the stage into the auditorium, so he could walk out among the seats while he sang. Whether every detail of the story is exact, the image is clear. A performer leaning out over the crowd, the house lights catching his face, the audience close enough to touch. That close connection between stage and seats became part of the Winter Garden's character.

In the 1920s, the theatre was remodelled, and much of the interior took on the shape it has today. Over the years, the building moved between uses. At times it showed films, and at other times it returned to live performance. But the pull of Broadway was strong. By the middle of the twentieth century, the Winter Garden was once again a home for major new musicals.

And what musicals they were. In 1957, West Side Story opened here. It retold the story of Romeo and Juliet on the streets of New York, with music by Leonard Bernstein and choreography by Jerome Robbins. A few years later, in 1964, a young Barbra Streisand opened here in Funny Girl, the show that made her a household name. Later came Mame, and then Stephen Sondheim's Follies. Few rooms in this city have launched so many shows that are still performed today.

Then came the cats. In 1982, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats moved in, and it stayed for almost two decades. To create the show's junkyard world, the interior was dramatically transformed. Much of the auditorium was covered, and the stage area was reshaped. When Cats finally closed in 2000, it had become one of the longest-running shows in Broadway history. Many New Yorkers simply thought of this building as the Cats theatre.

After Cats left, the theatre was restored, and much of its original decoration was uncovered and brought back. Then, in 2001, Mamma Mia! arrived, built on the songs of the Swedish pop group ABBA. It ran here for more than a decade before moving to another theatre. Since then, the stage has hosted a changing line of productions, including a revival of The Music Man starring Hugh Jackman. The pattern continues: big, popular musicals made for big, wide rooms.

The interior is now protected as a city landmark, which means its historic character must be respected. That matters on a street where so much changes so fast. Around you, billboards are replaced, shops open and close, and screens flicker with new advertisements every few seconds. The Winter Garden is one of the fixed points. The same plot of land has carried horses, revues, film audiences and generations of musical theatre fans.

If you have a ticket tonight, take a moment inside before the lights go down. Look at the width of the room and the way the seating spreads out across it. Notice the ceiling and the decorative details that survived years of covering and reworking. Then imagine the old horse hall below it all, and Jolson walking out over the crowd. If you are only passing by, the marquee and the entrance are still worth a pause.

Now look back at the doorway in front of you. The Broadway traffic keeps moving, and the crowds keep flowing toward Times Square. Somewhere behind those walls, a stage crew may be checking lights or sweeping the boards for the next performance. As you walk on, listen for a few bars of music drifting from a nearby theatre door. On this street, a show is always about to begin.