Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 19/06/2026 22:34:00

Adapted from a former horse exchange, the Winter Garden Theatre is a Broadway house at 1634 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan with a history stretching back to the era of carriages. The building began as the American Horse Exchange, erected by William K. Vanderbilt in the 1880s and rebuilt in 1896, when Times Square, then Long Acre Square, was the centre of the horse-and-carriage trade; by 1911, with automobiles ascendant, the Shubert family leased the Exchange and converted it into a theatre. The architect William Albert Swasey redesigned the building to resemble an outdoor English garden, and it opened as the Winter Garden in March 1911 as a large, lavish showcase for the Shuberts' musical revues. The theatre was completely remodelled in 1922 to 1923 by Herbert J. Krapp, who gave it the more intimate design it retains today while keeping its seating capacity broadly similar. Because of the size of its auditorium, stage and backstage facilities, the Winter Garden has long been favoured for large musical productions, and it seats around 1,600 across the orchestra, mezzanine and boxes. It has been operated continuously by the Shubert Organization, which has owned it longer than any of its other theatres, with only brief interludes as a movie house under Warner Brothers and United Artists. The house is woven into Broadway lore as the home of some of its longest runs, most famously the 18-year residency of Cats, which by its closing in 2000 had become the longest-running Broadway show of its time, and later the long run of Mamma Mia. For a period in the 2000s it carried a Cadillac sponsorship name. The auditorium and lobby interiors were designated a New York City landmark in 1988, recognising the building's architectural and theatrical significance. More than a century after a horse exchange was transformed into a playhouse, the Winter Garden remains one of Broadway's premier venues for big musicals.