Theater District, Manhattan
neighborhood in Manhattan
The Theater District, sometimes spelled Theatre District and officially zoned as the "Theater Subdistrict", is an area and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan where most Broadway theatres are located, in addition to other theaters, movie theaters, restaurants, hotels, and other places of entertainment. It is bounded by West 40th Street on the south, West 54th Street on the north, Sixth Avenue on the east and Eighth Avenue on the west, and includes Times Square. The Great White Way is the name given to the section of Broadway which runs through the Theater District.
It also contains recording studios, record label offices, theatrical agencies, television studios, restaurants, movie theaters, Duffy Square, Shubert Alley, the Brill Building, and Madame Tussauds New York.
Boundaries
The City of New York defines the subdistrict for zoning purposes to extend from 40th Street to 57th Street and from Sixth Avenue to Eighth Avenue, with an additional area west of Eighth Avenue from 42nd Street to 45th Street. The Times Square Alliance, a business improvement district organization dedicated to improving the Theater District, defines the district as an irregularly shaped area within the bounding box of 40th Street, 6th Avenue, 53rd Street, and 9th Avenue. As of 2024, the Vivian Beaumont Theater (part of Lincoln Center) is the only Broadway-class theater not located in the Theater District.
Other nearby theater areas
The area known as Theatre Row is an area on 42nd Street from Ninth Avenue to Eleventh Avenue, which includes many off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway theaters.
History
Origins and early history
In 1836, mayor Cornelius Lawrence opened 42nd Street to encourage the city's northern expansion, saying "move up town and enjoy the pure, clean air". The Theater District began attracting theaters and restaurants after the Metropolitan Opera House moved to West 39th Street and Broadway in 1883.
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This entry incorporates text from “Theater District, Manhattan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.