Broadway History - The Marquis Theatre

The Marquis Theater, part of the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel, opened in 1986 to great acclaim but its route to success was quite controversial. In 1973, developer and architect John Calvin Portman announced plans to built a 2,000-room hotel with a 1,600-seat theater in the heart of Times Square. At the time, New York was suffering economically and the Times Square area was considered dangerous. A theater inside a hotel would provide patrons with a safe environment shielded from the mean streets of the city. But three historic operational theaters-the Helen Hayes, the Morosco, and the Bijou-and two additional theaters-the Astor and the Gaiety-would be destroyed to clear the site. Protesters including Christopher Reeve, Susan Sarandon, Joe Papp, and Celeste Holm tried to stop the destruction, even forcing a Supreme Court challenge, but it was too late; "The Great Theater Massacre of 1982" proceeded. This resulted in landmark protection for most of the remaining early twentieth-century Broadway theaters. One of the newer theaters on Broadway, the Marquis has many sophisticated sound, acoustics, and lighting innovations. Leased by the Nederlander Organization, it opened with the production Me and My Girl.