Walk down 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth, look up at the ninth-story frieze where the number 1903 is carved into the stone, and you are standing under the building that, more than any other on this block, holds the strange double life of Broadway in its ribs: a Beaux-Arts ghost ship that nearly died as a kung-fu cinema and now sells tickets to a flying carpet eight times a week. The New Amsterdam Theatre at 214 West 42nd Street is older than the subway underneath it. It is older than the word “Broadway” as a brand. And the story of how it survived the twentieth century is the single best history lesson a first-time Broadway pilgrim can carry into a seat — because once you know it, every theater on this street starts to feel like a survivor.

This is what the Sunday history vignette is for. Not trivia. Reverence. The pilgrim who reads this and then walks under that frieze on the night of the show is no longer a tourist. They are a person who knows what they are looking at.

What you are walking into: the building itself

The New Amsterdam was designed by the New York firm Herts & Tallant, built by the George A. Fuller Company, and opened on October 26, 1903. Its facade is Beaux-Arts; its interior is one of the earliest serious examples of architectural Art Nouveau in New York City. That detail matters. Most American theaters of the period leaned on neoclassical columns and Italianate plaster. The New Amsterdam — with its sinuous flower motifs, peacocks worked into the proscenium, and murals that read more like Symbolist paintings than playbill ornament — was deliberately European, deliberately strange.

The building is also an unusual shape, and once you know why, the geometry of the block makes sense. The 42nd Street frontage is only 75 feet wide. The auditorium itself sits at the rear of the lot, facing south and opening onto 41st Street, which is 150 feet wide. The lot runs 200 feet between the two streets. The ten-story office tower on 42nd Street was a working business address; the actual theater is the building behind it. When you walk in through the lobby on 42nd, you are walking through what is essentially an office building to reach the auditorium.

The opening production was Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is recorded, with some affection, as a failure — the show reportedly cost five times the budget of a typical Broadway production at the time. The New Amsterdam was not built modestly.

The Ziegfeld years, and the rooftop theater you cannot see anymore

Here is the fact that recasts the building for most pilgrims: from 1913 to 1927, the New Amsterdam was the home of the Ziegfeld Follies. Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. kept his office on the seventh floor of the tower. The Follies opened at the New Amsterdam on June 16, 1913, and ran there nearly every year of that fourteen-year window. The 1924 edition ran the longest of any of them — 401 performances.

The cast list of the Follies at the New Amsterdam is essentially a roll call of early-twentieth-century American performance: Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, W. C. Fields, Ina Claire, Marilyn Miller, Will Rogers, Sophie Tucker, Bert Williams, Van and Schenck. A first-time pilgrim standing in the orchestra is standing in the room where Will Rogers worked out his rope routines and where Fanny Brice — the Fanny Brice who would later become Barbra Streisand’s Funny Girl — built her career.

And then there is the second theater, the one you cannot visit. The roof of the New Amsterdam was a separate venue. The Aerial Gardens opened June 6, 1904, with an early seat count of around 680. After Ziegfeld took over the building, the rooftop space was rebuilt as a 22,000-square-foot dance floor with a U-shaped balcony, and it operated under a rotating cast of names: the Ziegfeld Roof, the Danse de Follies, the Dresden Theatre, the Frolics Theatre, and finally the New Amsterdam Roof. Beginning in 1915, Ziegfeld ran the Midnight Frolic up there — a late-night, more risqué companion piece to the Follies that you attended after the curtain came down on the main stage. Prohibition killed it; the Midnight Frolic closed in 1921 or 1922 because so much of its business had depended on champagne service. Two elevators in the lobby once carried audiences up to that rooftop. They no longer do. The rooftop theater is gone as a public room. Knowing it was once there is part of what it means to know this building.

The fall: from Follies to kung fu

The collapse of the New Amsterdam is one of the saddest arcs in Broadway history, and it is worth telling honestly, because it is the prerequisite for understanding what the restoration actually accomplished.

By the late 1920s, the Follies were fading. Erlanger bought out Klaw’s interest in 1927. The last live performance at the New Amsterdam under the old regime was a production of Othello that premiered in January 1937 and ran twenty-one performances. That was the last live theater the building would see for more than half a century.

In June 1937, the theater was sold to Max A. Cohen of Anco Enterprises, and on July 3, 1937, it reopened as a movie house. The first film it showed was — with a kind of accidental cruelty — the screen adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the same play that had opened the theater thirty-four years earlier. Bernard Sobel, Ziegfeld’s former press agent, wrote in The New York Times that this was “another indication that the old order has indeed changed.”

The cinema operated until roughly 1982 or 1983. In its last years, with 42nd Street in deep decline, the New Amsterdam screened kung fu movies. Two armed guards were killed there in a 1976 robbery. A patron was stabbed to death in 1979. The Art Nouveau peacocks watched it all from a leaking ceiling.

The restoration: what Disney actually did

The Walt Disney Company leased the building in the mid-1990s. The restoration was carried out by the architecture firm Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer from 1995 to 1997. The mechanical systems were completely replaced. The interior was painstakingly returned toward its 1903 state, with the Art Nouveau detailing recovered, repaired, or — where it had been destroyed — recreated using period photographs and the surviving fragments of original plasterwork.

The reopened theater seats 1,702, split across three levels: 698 in the orchestra, 586 in the mezzanine, and 418 in the balcony. The first Disney stage production after restoration was The Lion King, followed eventually by Mary Poppins, and then by Aladdin, which has been running at the New Amsterdam since 2014 and continues today. As of this writing, the box office at 214 West 42nd is open Monday through Friday from 9 AM to 8 PM, Saturday 10 AM to 8 PM, and Sunday 10 AM to 6:30 PM, selling tickets to Aladdin.

The pilgrim should know one more layer here: the building was already protected before Disney arrived. The facade was designated a New York City Landmark on October 23, 1979. The interior was separately designated a New York City Landmark on the same date — a much rarer distinction. It was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on January 10, 1980. The legal protections were in place; what was missing was money and a tenant willing to spend it. Disney provided both, on a 99-year lease.

The ghost, briefly

An urban legend, repeated often enough that it deserves a paragraph: the New Amsterdam is said to be haunted by Olive Thomas, a silent-film star and former Ziegfeld girl who died young in 1920. The story is folklore. It is not a fact. But the pilgrim who has read this far should know the story exists, because the people working in this building tell it, and because folklore is part of what a 122-year-old theater accumulates. If the woman in the green dress shows up in your peripheral vision on the mezzanine, you are participating in a Broadway tradition that predates Disney by seventy-five years.

The Pilgrim’s prep: how to encounter this building

If you are seeing Aladdin or any future show at the New Amsterdam, the history is not a distraction from the experience. It is the experience. A few practical notes for first-timers:

Arrive early enough to look up. The lobby is the part of the building most people walk through fastest, and it is one of the densest Art Nouveau spaces in the United States. Give yourself twenty minutes before curtain. Look at the ceiling. Look at the proscenium peacocks. Look at how the murals are organized around themes of progress, art, and drama — these were chosen on purpose in 1903 and survived everything that came after.

Buy tickets only from official sources. For Aladdin, the official channels are Disney’s site at aladdinthemusical.com and Ticketmaster. The box office at the theater itself sells tickets in person during the hours listed above. Anything outside of those channels is a resale market, and the New Amsterdam — like every Broadway house — has its share of street operators selling tickets that may or may not get you in the door.

Dress for the room you’re walking into. The New Amsterdam audience trends slightly more dressed than the Broadway average, partly because the Disney shows draw families who treat the night as an occasion, and partly because the building itself rewards a little effort. Smart casual at minimum. You do not need a jacket. You also will not feel out of place in one.

Get to 42nd Street from the right direction if you can. Walking east from Eighth Avenue toward Times Square, the New Amsterdam emerges on your left and the restored marquee runs nearly the full width of the building. From Seventh Avenue walking west, you see the office tower first and the theater entrance reveals itself only as you draw level with it. The eastbound approach is the better first encounter.

The alley behind the building, on 41st Street, is the stage door. If you stay for stage door after the show, the cast comes out on 41st, not 42nd. This is true for many Broadway houses where the auditorium and the marquee face different streets — the New Amsterdam is one of the clearer examples.

Why this one matters in the pilgrimage

A first-time Broadway visit can collapse into a single transaction: ticket bought, show watched, ticket discarded. The New Amsterdam exists to resist that collapse. It is a building that, by the most reasonable accounting, should not still be standing as a theater. The kung-fu cinema era should have ended with demolition. The 1990s Times Square redevelopment could have turned the lot into another office tower. The interior landmark designation in 1979 — that single bureaucratic act, ten years before Disney arrived — is part of why the peacocks are still where they were when Ziegfeld first looked at them.

So when you walk in, you are walking into a chain of decisions that includes Herts & Tallant in 1902, Ziegfeld in 1913, Cohen in 1937, the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1979, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer in 1995, and Disney in 1997, all the way to whichever house manager unlocks the doors for tonight’s performance. The pilgrim who knows that chain is not watching a show. They are participating in the most recent link of it.

Read the room you’re sitting in. That is the only ritual that matters.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is the New Amsterdam Theatre located?

The New Amsterdam Theatre is at 214 West 42nd Street in Manhattan, between Seventh Avenue and Eighth Avenue, near the southern edge of Times Square. The main entrance is on 42nd Street; the stage door and the rear of the auditorium open onto 41st Street.

When was the New Amsterdam Theatre built?

The building was constructed from 1902 to 1903 and opened on October 26, 1903, with a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was designed by the architecture firm Herts & Tallant and is one of the oldest surviving Broadway theaters.

What show is playing at the New Amsterdam Theatre right now?

As of 2026, Disney’s Aladdin is the current production at the New Amsterdam. Aladdin has been running at the theater since 2014. Tickets are sold through Disney’s official site at aladdinthemusical.com, through Ticketmaster, and at the box office at 214 West 42nd Street.

How many seats does the New Amsterdam Theatre have?

The theater seats 1,702 across three levels — 698 in the orchestra, 586 in the mezzanine, and 418 in the balcony. At the time of its 1903 opening it was the largest theater on Broadway.

Was the New Amsterdam really the home of the Ziegfeld Follies?

Yes. From 1913 to 1927, the Ziegfeld Follies were staged at the New Amsterdam nearly every year. Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. kept his office in the building, on the seventh floor of the office tower. The 1924 edition of the Follies, with 401 performances, was the longest-running of any edition.

Is there really a rooftop theater on top of the New Amsterdam?

There was. The Aerial Gardens opened on the roof on June 6, 1904, and was later rebuilt as the Ziegfeld Roof, which housed the Midnight Frolic beginning in 1915. The rooftop venue was closed and is no longer open to the public. Two elevators in the original lobby once carried audiences up to it.

What happened to the theater between Ziegfeld and Disney?

The last live performance under the original regime was a production of Othello in January 1937. In July 1937 the building was sold and reopened as a movie theater, which it remained until roughly 1982 or 1983. In its final cinema years it primarily showed kung-fu films. The Walt Disney Company leased the building and, with Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, restored it between 1995 and 1997.

Is the New Amsterdam Theatre a landmark?

Yes — twice. The facade was designated a New York City Landmark on October 23, 1979, and the interior was separately designated a New York City Landmark on the same date. The building was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on January 10, 1980.

Where is the stage door for the New Amsterdam?

The stage door is on West 41st Street, behind the building. The auditorium is at the rear of the lot and faces 41st; the marquee and lobby are on 42nd. If you plan to stay after the show for the stage door, walk around to 41st when the curtain drops.

Sources used to verify the facts in this article: Disney’s official Aladdin site (aladdinthemusical.com), the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designation records, the U.S. National Register of Historic Places listing, and Wikipedia’s heavily-cited article on the New Amsterdam Theatre. Where this article cites years, dates, seat counts, or production names, those facts were directly fetched from primary or near-primary sources before publication.

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