Ed Sullivan Theater

• 1. Introduction

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  The Ed Sullivan Theater sits at 1697 Broadway, wedged between 53rd and 54th streets in Midtown Manhattan, and it has never quite been just one thing. Arthur Hammerstein built it between 1926 and 1927 as a memorial to his father, Oscar Hammerstein I, spending $1.5 million on the land alone. Herbert J. Krapp designed the interior to look like a cathedral, with a domed ceiling, stained glass windows, and neo-Gothic stonework that the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission later struggled to explain. No other Broadway theater of the era was built this way. The building has been a Broadway house, a music hall run by mobsters, a CBS radio home, a television landmark, a host to the Beatles, and for more than three decades the home of late-night television. On the 21st of May, 2026, the Late Show with Stephen Colbert broadcast its final episode from the stage and went dark. Because the interior holds official city landmark status, no future owner can tear it down. What happens next is unresolved. But to understand why this building matters, it helps to start at the very beginning, with a father, a son, and a bronze statue.

• 2. A Son's Memorial

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  Arthur Hammerstein announced plans for a "Temple of Music" in memory of his father in May 1926, the same year he paid $1.5 million for the land at 1697 Broadway and 213-223 West 53rd Street. The name proved too long for theater playbills, and it was shortened to Hammerstein's Theatre by March 1927. The cornerstone-laying ceremony, held on the 30th of September that year, drew Mayor Jimmy Walker, who gave a speech praising the Hammerstein family. Into the cornerstone went mementos of Oscar Hammerstein I: a silk top hat and a cigar. In the inner lobby, a bronze statue of Oscar, designed by sculptor Pompeo Coppini, stood in the center bay of the east wall. The elder Hammerstein had died in 1919, and Arthur had first approached Lee Shubert about naming what became the Imperial Theatre after his father. Shubert refused, but the Imperial did stage two Hammerstein works in its early years; one of them, Rose-Marie, grossed enough money to fund the dedicated memorial Arthur had envisioned, at a projected cost of $3 million. When critic Burns Mantle of the New York Daily News attended the theater's formal dedication on the 30th of November, 1927, he described Hammerstein's as "a vaulted temple in free Gothic." Robert Coleman of the New York Daily Mirror wrote that it was "just such a playhouse as the father of American grand opera would have loved." Arthur Hammerstein had reportedly kept a bar room in his own office in the building's 13-story tower.

• 3. Opening Night and Collapse

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  Golden Dawn, the musical that Hammerstein had commissioned Hungarian composer Emmerich Kalman to write specifically for the theater's opening, featured a performer the program listed as Archie Leach. That was the birth name of Cary Grant, making his American stage debut. The production also included what is recorded as the first topless woman to appear in a stage production in the United States. Eleven portraits of the cast, painted by the artist Joseph Cummings Chase, hung in the lobby. Despite those distinctions, Golden Dawn lost money, running 184 performances into May 1928. Good Boy followed in September 1928 and ran 253 performances. Sweet Adeline opened in September 1929, weeks before the Wall Street Crash, and still managed 235 performances before closing in March 1930. Then came Luana, which closed after 16 performances, and Ballyhoo, which ran 68. In February 1931, the Manufacturers Trust Company moved to foreclose on roughly $1.3 million in mortgage loans. The following month, Arthur Hammerstein filed for bankruptcy, declaring that he had just $5.77 to his name, having lost $2 million in the preceding years. His own bankruptcy filings called the theater and office building the "milestone" in his financial ruin, without which he said he would have remained fairly wealthy. At an April 1931 auction, the bank foreclosed on the property. Manufacturers Trust then tried to sell the building and failed. In June of that year, producers Laurence Schwab and Frank Mandel leased the theater, and in August 1931 it was renamed the Manhattan Theatre. As part of the transition, Oscar Hammerstein's bronze statue was removed from the lobby.

• 4. Nightclubs, Mobsters, and the WPA

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  Billy Rose signed a lease on the theater in early 1934, after a holding company had first planned to turn it into a "restaurant and music hall" called the Manhattan Casino. Clark Robinson, who had decorated both Radio City Music Hall and Rose's Casino de Paree, redesigned the interior while keeping the overall Gothic scheme intact. Billy Rose's Music Hall opened on the 21st of June, 1934, offering luncheons, dinners, and suppers alongside newsreels, comedies, a hundred singing waiters, and a hundred "American beauties" who also served as hostesses. It was one of three theaters near 54th Street converted to nightclubs that decade. Rose traveled to Europe for eight weeks shortly after opening to recruit acts for the next season. Within a month of his departure, labor complaints forced mass firings of staff. Mobsters moved into the operation during his absence, among them Lucky Luciano, prompting an investigation that involved J. Edgar Hoover. The New York City government also tried that September to require the hall to apply for a theater license, because it showed short films. Rose withdrew from the hall the same month over a pay dispute. The venue was renamed the Manhattan Music Hall in November 1934 and closed permanently in January 1936. What followed was a brief intervention by the Works Progress Administration, which staged productions including American Holiday, Murder in the Cathedral, Class of '29, and Help Yourself through 1936. No theatrical production has been staged in that space since Help Yourself closed.

• 5. Radio, Television, and Ed Sullivan

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  CBS tested the Manhattan Theatre's acoustics in July 1936 to see whether it could work as a broadcast playhouse. The network acquired the lease the following month and hired architect William Lescaze to renovate the interior. Lescaze kept nearly all of Herbert Krapp's design touches but covered many walls with smooth white panels. Rock wool was added to the floors and walls to insulate against the noise of nearby elevated and subway trains. A New York Times reporter wrote in 1943 that the onetime memorial to Oscar Hammerstein I had become "another kind of shrine" on Saturday nights, when teenagers gathered outside to hear Frank Sinatra broadcast from inside. The theater was converted from radio to television in 1949, becoming CBS-TV Studio 50. The first TV show to air from the space was Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. The Jackie Gleason Show followed in September 1952. Toast of the Town, hosted by newspaper columnist and impresario Ed Sullivan, relocated to Studio 50 in January 1953 because its previous home at the Maxine Elliott Theatre was too small. In 1964, Studio 50 hosted the Beatles' debut performance in the United States. The first color episode of The Ed Sullivan Show aired on the 31st of October, 1965. On the 10th of December, 1967, CBS officially renamed the theater after Sullivan, in honor of his show's 20th anniversary. By the time The Ed Sullivan Show was canceled in 1971, it was the longest-running television show ever broadcast. The stage had also introduced Elvis Presley to a national television audience via The Stage Show with Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. Other performers who appeared on Sullivan's program included Lesley Gore, Tom Jones, Dusty Springfield, the Supremes, the Mamas and the Papas, and the Jackson 5.

• 6. Between Eras

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  After The Ed Sullivan Show ended in 1971, CBS was paying $100,000 a year for the Sullivan Theater while it sat largely empty. Game shows filled parts of the schedule: The $10,000 Pyramid premiered there in 1973, transferred to ABC in 1974 and kept broadcasting from the same stage. Musical Chairs with singer Adam Wade, Pass the Buck with Bill Cullen, and Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell all used the venue briefly in the mid-to-late 1970s. By 1980, the building was owned by Bankers Life and Casualty, and CBS chose not to renew its lease when it expired in December 1981. Both the Nederlander Organization and the Shubert Organization expressed interest in taking over the theater; the Shuberts, who were federally prohibited from acquiring more theaters at the time, even petitioned a federal court to lift the restriction. Instead, the building became Teletape Studios, a facility for Reeves Entertainment, in March 1982. Reeves installed a larger stage measuring 80 by 80 feet, refurbished dressing rooms, and added new lighting and soundproofing. The sitcom Kate and Allie taped there from 1984 to 1989. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission had begun discussing landmark status for the building in 1982 and designated its interior as an official city landmark in January 1988. That designation was ratified by the New York City Board of Estimate in March 1988. David Niles's company 1125 Productions signed a lease in December 1989 and recalled the theater at the time as resembling a "bombed-out tenement."

• 7. Letterman, Colbert, and the Final Broadcast

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  In February 1993, CBS bought the Ed Sullivan Theater from Winthrop Financial Associates for $4.5 million, after David Letterman decided to tape his new Late Show in New York rather than Los Angeles. The firm Polshek Partnership oversaw a renovation completed in twelve weeks by two hundred workers. Five concave sound-insulation shells were hung from an elliptical ring below the dome, concealing air conditioning equipment that held the auditorium at 62 degrees Fahrenheit. CBS removed the original stained-glass windows and placed them in storage. The renovation cost, never publicly disclosed, has been estimated at $4 million. The Late Show premiered at the Ed Sullivan Theater on the 30th of August, 1993. In 2014, Letterman announced his retirement and Stephen Colbert was named as his successor. CBS secured $5 million in tax breaks from New York state to keep the show at the Sullivan. During the 2015 renovation for Colbert, workers uncovering the dome found old tools, traffic citations, and cigars from the mid-20th century inside the ceiling cavities. The stained-glass windows, which had been in storage since the Letterman era, were restored. New audience seats reduced total capacity from 461 to 370. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert held its first broadcast on the 8th of September, 2015. The show survived the COVID-19 pandemic, went into production hiatus in March 2020, and returned to the auditorium with a studio audience on the 14th of June, 2021. The final broadcast aired on the 21st of May, 2026, when CBS canceled the show for financial reasons. Objects from the set were sold off in early 2026; the set itself was donated to the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago. The Shubert Organization, Nederlander Organization, and ATG Entertainment all expressed interest in potentially acquiring the building, whose landmark status legally requires it to remain a theater.