More comedy specials have been filmed under this Colonial Revival portico than anywhere else on earth - over 35 tapings and counting, a world record that keeps growing. The Wilbur at 246 Tremont Street in Boston's Theater District opened on April 20, 1914 with Edward Sheldon's Romance. The Shubert brothers built the theater and named it for their associate A.L. Wilbur; architect Clarence H. Blackall - designer of the Colonial and the Metropolitan - gave it a uniquely Boston character, incorporating a portico salvaged from an 1830s Beacon Hill townhouse into the Tremont Street facade. The intimacy is engineering, not accident: built before amplification existed, the house keeps every one of its 1,093 seats close enough to hear an unmiked voice, and a young Marlon Brando was among the century of stage names who worked pre-Broadway tryouts here. The modern era began in 2008 when Bill Blumenreich, former owner of the Comedy Connection, leased and revitalized the building, reorienting it around stand-up comedy and live music with removable orchestra seating that lifts capacity to about 1,200 general admission. The results put the room among Pollstar's top five club-level sellers worldwide year after year, with a taping resume that runs from Bill Burr to Sam Morril's nine-sold-out-show Amazon special. The theater joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and became a Boston Landmark in 1987, with full bars on all three levels servicing the orchestra, mezzanine and balcony. A house built for the unamplified voice turned out to be built for the punchline - the Wilbur's second century is the proof. The economics of the taping boom flow both ways: comics choose the Wilbur because the room reads intimate on camera while selling twelve hundred tickets a night, and Boston audiences have learned that any given weekend show may double as the recording of the next special they stream.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 246 Tremont St., Boston, MA, United States, 02116

Website: https://thewilbur.com

Cover Charge: 1

Capacity: 1093

Opening Date: 20/04/1914

Accessible