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In an improbable dual feat of preservation and demolition, two Times Square theaters are combined to create the Ford Center for the Performing Arts.
In its heyday, New York's 1903 Lyric Theater resounded with the voices of Fred Astaire, Douglas Fairbanks, and the Marx Brothers. At the 1920 Apolo Theater next door, Ethel Merman and Jimmy Durante crooned, and Lionel Barrymore played Macbeth. But like many glamorous 42nd Street playhouses, the Lyric and Apollo grew derelict as pornography, crime, and prostitution disfigured their Times Square neighborhood after the Great Depression. By the early 1990s, when the city and state joined forces to reclaim the area, including seven legendary theaters, the Lyric was boarded shut and virtually gutted, its glittering gold leaf and stenciled lyres a distant memory, and the Apollo (renamed the Academy in 1987) was reborn as a seatless rock-concert hall.
During 42nd Street's recent renaissance, the New Amsterdam and New Victory theaters were restored through traditional preservationists' means, but the early 20thcentury spirit of the Lyric and Apollo came back to life through an improbable combination of meticulous conservation and extensive demolition. Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners (BBB) replaced the two vintage playhouses with the capacious Ford Center for the Performing Arts, a richly detailed, state-of-the-art theater that reincorporates such key elements as the Apollo's cherubadorned proscenium arch and the Lyric's elegant facades. "Clearly, something radical had to be done," says Partner Richard Blinder. "The decision to go from two theaters to one was determined early on, given the client's programmatic needs," Blinder adds.
Client Garth Drabinsky, chairman and CEO of the Toronto-based theatrical production company Livent, envisioned staging spectacular musicals, which would require a 55-by-100-foot stage, a generous forestage area, 75 cast-member dressing rooms, a 100-foot-high fly loft, and the technological capacity for extravagant lighting and sound effects. Typical of their era, the Lyric and Apollo housed modest stages with minimal support spaces; in many traditional Broadway theaters, actors dressed in corridors or cubicles stacked in the wings, and during intermission, audiences simply overflowed from meager lobbies onto the sidewalk.
Drabinsky had revived the splendor of other antiquated theaters, including New York's historic Carnegie Hall Cinema,Toronto's 1920 Pantages and, currently in the works, Chicago's 1925 Oriental. But to justify a...