5. The Liberty Theatre, 1904
Though the venue is no longer used as a Broadway theater, The Liberty Theatre was among the first professional theaters to operate on Broadway. The theater was built in 1904 in a Beaux-Arts style designed by Klaw and Erlanger. The design featured a Neo-Classical inspired facade, which included a 100-foot-long lobby entry, a set of caryatides by the main entry, and a large arched window below a carving of the Liberty Bell. The auditorium, which held over 1,000 seats, also featured Liberty Bells and eagles circling the dome ceiling and the proscenium arch.
The Liberty Theatre only remained a Broadway theater until 1933 when it was converted to a movie theater, and remained as such until 1996. By then, much of the original Beaux-Arts architecture had been removed and remodeled. A staged reading of T.S. Elliot’s “The Waste Land” was produced at The Liberty but closed shortly after its opening. After years of vacancy, the foyer was remodeled as a restaurant where a bar currently operates and the auditorium is used for special events. A few lucky guests got to see inside the auditorium in 2015 as The Liberty Theater was the setting of Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic, a unique immersive performance created by artist and author Cynthia von Buhler of Speakeasy Dollhouse. It was most recently the venue of a haunted attraction which closed in 2022.