The History Of The Hippodrome, Once NYC's Greatest Theater

By James and Karla Murray

From the outside, 1120 Avenue of the Americas appears to be an ordinary building—an anonymous edifice in Midtown's sea of glass towers. Tourists making their pilgrimages to Bryant Park or the New York Public Library or Times Square may pass by the building, which stands between 43rd and 44th Streets, but they don't stop. Perhaps they would if they realized they are walking on hallowed ground. This was the site of the Hippodrome Theater, once largest theater in the world and the pride of New York City.

We came upon the history of the Hippodrome Theater by chance. We were on a photography job for a client at 1120 and noticed a large-format photo of an old theater in the lobby. We learned from the building's owner, Edison Properties, that remnants of the theater survived. Intrigued, we began to investigate the history of the site.

The Hippodrome Theater was the brainchild of Frederick Thompson and Elmer S. Dundy, showmen and entrepreneurs famous for creating Luna Park at Coney Island. Thompson imagined a vast "amusement resort" that would cater to the masses, offering them a brief respite from their tiresome lives of toil.

He drew inspiration from the so-called "hippodromes" of Europe, grand attractions with horse racing, circuses, and more. (The original hippodromes of Ancient Greece were open stadiums where crowds gathered to watch chariot or horse races.) Thompson and Dundy hired the architect Jay Morgan to design the building, a Beaux-Arts masterpiece inflected with elements of Moorish Revival. Thompson also worked on the building design and oversaw construction. (Thompson was a bit of a Renaissance man. He had training in architecture, sculpture, and painting, excelled as a mechanic and electrician, arranged music, and, of course, knew how to make a buck off spectacle.)

The theater was enormous, with a seating capacity of 5,200 and a stage ten times the size of the average Broadway stage—large enough to accommodate 1,000 performers and crew members or a full circus with elephants and horses. The interior was decorated in the Roman style, with deep reds and structural accents of gold, silver, and ivory. The promenade and lobbies were rendered in limestone and marble.

Thompson designed the theater's ingenious mechanical workings, which included complicated hydraulic elevators, counterweights, and hoists and traps. The stage featured an enormous glass water tank, almost 90 feet long, that could hold 8,000 gallons and would be used for swimming, diving, and even ice skating shows. A powerful plumbing system could fill the tank in just two minutes and hydraulic pistons could move it up and down.

To create the theater's inaugural show, Thompson and Dundy brought in the greatest talents in choreography and in stage and costume design. The British composer Manuel Klein was hired as musical director and George V. Hobart, later a collaborator of Cole Porter’s, signed on to write the book.

On April 12, 1905, the Hippodrome Theater opened its doors to a full house. The four-hour multi-part premier featured, among other things, a re-enactment of the Battle of Andersonville, musical interludes from a chorus of almost 300, a parade of cars driven by elephants, an equestrienne ballet, and high-flying acrobats. (In a climactic scene of Andersonville, actors portraying cavalry rode actual horses into the giant pool.)

The result was impressive. "I have never seed nothin' as big as this out Walla Walla ways," a visitor told a reporter at the NYT.

Thompson and Dundy marketed the Hippodrome as the "biggest show in the world at the lowest prices." Tickets as cheap as 25 cents attracted the city's working class, for whom the pricey theaters of Broadway were out of reach.

Speaking to a reporter from the NY Tribune the day after the Hippodrome opened, Thompson described his creation as a "gigantic toy" for the masses that "democratizes theatre-going in the same way that department stores had democratized shopping.

Thompson hatched a scheme to prevent "ticket speculators" from driving up prices by stationing ticket agents outside the theater selling face-value tickets. It's unclear if he ever put the plan into action—regardless and unsurprisingly, the speculators persisted.

In the theater's first year of operation, three million people visited. Throughout the aughts, the Hippodrome was a box office powerhouse and its offerings won critical acclaim. (The NYT described a show from 1911 as "A Sort of Eighth Wonder of the World.")

During a show, the stage was illuminated by 40,000 electric lights, which required almost 200 men to operate. The theater required so much electricity that the building had its own dedicated generators. The entire facade along Sixth Avenue was lit up, an electrical marvel that that could be seen for miles. Even the two corner towers of the building, topped by a globe, were covered in electric lights.

Perhaps the biggest star ever to visit the Hippodrome was the great Harry Houdini. During a show in January of 1918, Houdini brought a five-ton Asian elephant on stage, led her into a large cabinet, and proceeded to make her disappear. The "Vanishing Elephant" became one of Houdini's famous tricks, elevating his reputation as a master magician and illusionist.

After World War I, the theater began to show musical extravaganzas produced by Broadway impresario Charles Dillingham. Dillingham's most famous production was the 1922 show "Better Times," which ran for more than 400 performances. Despite the success of "Better Times," though, the Hippodrome was in trouble. Production costs were enormous—approaching $40,000 a week during a 40-week season according to one estimate. Debts began to pile up.

Soon, the Hippodrome's elephants—symbols of its grand beginnings—were moved uptown to the Bronx's Royal Theater. Dillingham stepped down and B.F. Albee, president of the B.F. Keith Vaudeville Circuit, took over the theater's management.

Albee hired the legendary theater designer Thomas Lamb to transform the Hippodromef into a vaudeville theatre. Lamb built a smaller stage and discarded many of the original theater's unique features.

Films were added to the Hippodrome's repertoire to attract new customers, but by that point, there were already newer and grander movie palaces in the Theater District. Keith-Albee sold the theater in 1929, to a developer hoping to erect a skyscraper on the land. When the stock market crashed, the developer abandoned its plans.

The theater sat vacant, then reopened in 1933 as the New York Hippodrome Cinema Theater. A successful 1935 run of the circus musical "Jumbo" briefly revitalized the Hippodrome and for several years thereafter, it booked late-run movies, boxing, wrestling, and Jai Lai matches.

By the end of the decade, with real estate values in the area rising, a theater on the site no longer made sense. In 1939, the Hippodrome was torn down.

A new building at 1120 went up in 1952. Edison bought it from Mass Mutual in 1978 and later renovated it, adding the glass curtain wall and a new lobby.

In recognition of the building's history, Edison installed the photo of the original theater in the new lobby.

In 2010, while excavating in the basement for a renovation of the building's central air system, construction workers discovered a 100-square-foot patch of the original bricks that had lined the floor of the stage. The bricks, which had been buried when the theater was torn down in 1939, were carefully removed and saved.

The workers also found a metal gaff with a wooden handle. Daniel Kaye, building manager for the Hippodrome, said he believes the gaffer would have been used by stagehands to manipulate curtains and heavy drapery.

Today, if you park your car in the lower level garage of the Hippodrome, you still see evidence of the building's rich history. On a wall behind rows of parked cars, there's an unassuming iron ring that has been affixed to the masonry for the past 112 years. The basement-level stables of the theater once stood here. The ring is a horse hitch.

James and Karla Murray write about and photograph New York City. More of their work can be viewed at their website.