Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2004 - 45

The balcony as it looks today. The architects
omitted the center aisle and decreased the
number of seats to give more legroom. (left)

George M. Cohan opened the new playhouse on December 7, 1925, moving his show Easy Come, Easy Go, from the
Cohan Theatre on Broadway to the Biltmore. Like the rest of
the Broadway playhouses after the onset of the Depression, the
Biltmore had many more dark periods than bookings in the
1930s and no big hits on its stage to carry it through hard
times. The Federal Theatre Project took it over briefly in 1936,
staging several of its controversial "living newspapers" but it
was returned to commercial production thereafter.
Things eventually picked up on Broadway and the
Biltmore had several solid bookings. In 1938, a play called
What a Life introduced a character named Henry Aldrich, a
high school teenager, who gets in and out of innocuous
trouble. The play endured for more than 500 performances,
but more importantly, the character was transferred to a radio
show and movies and endured for many years..
More good times were to come for the Biltmore. During
the 1940s, My Sister Eileen and Kiss and Tell were enormous
hits, each playing close to one thousand performances, but in
1952, the Biltmore was taken from show production and
leased to CBS for ten years as a radio and TV studio. When it
was again returned to legitimate use, it was home to two shows
that have been permanently associated with the Biltmore,
Barefoot in the Park and Hair. In subject and spirit, they
could not be more unlike but together they defined a changing
generation. Barefoot in the Park, a play about young newlyweds and their problems, remained on the Biltmore stage for
nearly four years while Hair, the rock musical with a radical
political message that shocked just about everyone, lingered
more than four years. Both of these shows moved on to Hollywood to become hit movies.
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TD & T

CONSTRUCTION PHOTOS COURTESY POLSHEK PARTNERSHIP ARCHITECTS

While the contractor was digging the basement,
restorative work had already begun on the
balcony level. (below)

In 1987, the interior (but not the exterior) of the
Biltmore received landmark designation, which presented a
problem for the owner. In the midst of the economic doldrums
of the 1980a, there were no bookings for the Biltmore and the
owners, eyeing the bounty in air rights that went with the theatre, applied for a demolition permit despite the landmark
designation. (Air rights are invisible layers or stories above a
low-rise building that theoretically could have been part of the
original building but were not built. Through a very complicated formula, the city arrives at an allowable square footage
that can be sold to adjacent buildings.) The Biltmore seemed
to land on the auction block every few years and changed
hands several times from 1958 to 1997.) But fate stepped in
with the new owners, the Jack Parker Corporation and the
Moinian Group, who wanted to use the air rights that came

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2004