Deep Inside The Ed Sullivan Theater, Part 2
Deep Inside The Ed Sullivan Theater, Part 2
The 13-story, brown brick and terra cotta office building with a ground-floor theater was built by Arthur Hammerstein between 1925 and 1927, and was named Hammerstein’s Theater after his father, Oscar Hammerstein I. The theater auditorium had a number of beautiful stain glass windows that were removed for safe keeping when the Letterman renovation was done.
Below left you can see part of one of a dozen or so wooden crates that these windows are safely packed in. The NYC Historical Commission requires that they be safeguarded and stored on site.
In the center we see the “elephant columns”. At some point in the 1950s, Sullivan took interest in an elephant act touring with Ringling Brothers and wanted them on the show. Before they arrived, some calculations were made and it was determined that they were too heavy for the stage without some extra support, so, these two columns were added under center stage. Today, this space is the Green Room for visiting bands that close the show.
Behind the doors on the right is where the Studio 50 control room used to be. This photo was taken from the lobby entrance near the box office. To the left is the interior theater lobby and directly behind me is the arrival lobby and the main entrance doors on Broadway. This space is now part of the auditorium again and the control room is in the basement with all the other production and technical elements of the show. More soon!
Thanks for the treat! I can’t tell you how much the work you are doing. When I was 8, my dad took me on a train excursion from Rochester,NY to NYC. He was a great man in so many ways! He got tickets to the Sullivan Show (later in life I got to work from “graduates”-Bill Bohnert, John Moffit, and Tim Kiley). My dad also got up at 6AM and took me to the Florida Showcase to see Today–which I also worked on.
The double doors seen in the third photo actually led to the right-side aisle from the lobby. The old control room occupied a large section of the back right corner of the audience seating. There are three sets of doors like this: left, center, and right. Shown here is the right side double door set. The old control room extended between this double door and the center double door with a depth of about 8 rows of seats at the back of the Theater, additionally running all the way to the back wall.
When I worked in the Theater 1984-86, that space was much more ‘open’ under the stage, but those columns were there; I remember them. Interesting note: The Sullivan stage floor (above those columns) is made of wood. It’s very thick and sturdy, but it’s a wood floor.
And we must remember that for one brief moment, those ‘Elephant’ columns had to support the ego of Howard Cosell in 1975.