The Museum of Broadway is starting its third successful year in a handsome building off of Times Square, at 145 West 45th Street, between Seventh and Sixth Avenues, right next to the Lyceum Theater, where the hit Broadway comedy Oh, Mary! resides.
The idea for the Museum of Broadway came from a friend of theater producer Julie Boardman, who asked her why there wasn’t a museum about Broadway theater. The concept intrigued Boardman, and a few days later, she asked Diane Nicoletti, a marketing entrepreneur, to join her as a co-partner in a collaborative effort to create a museum showcasing the rich history of Broadway.
Their plan was to open the museum within three years, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed their goal, and it took five years instead. The effort began as a self-funded project with a few theater owners chipping in, along with the American Theater Wing and a variety of other theater investors. The purchase of each ticket to the museum benefits the nonprofit, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS efforts.
Eventually, Boardman and Nicoletti obtained a lease on a closed Irish pub, and somehow money began to coffer up. David Rockwell, an architect and Tony-winning set designer, offered his help to create the building’s first floor – a lobby and a gift shop. Above, there are three large floors for a lecture hall and exhibit spaces for scenery, costumes, photographs and videos.
Boardman wanted the museum to be a chronological look at Broadway theater from its beginning until the present. Your first stop is “The Map Room” on the third floor, where you can watch a video that details Broadway’s start in 1732, downtown in New York’s Financial District. The theater district moved up to Union Square, then Herald Square and finally Times Square where Broadway occupies 41 “legitimate theaters” for plays and musicals.
After this brief history lesson, you’ll get to saunter into a fabulous exhibit of a trip down Broadway, from the 1920’s Ziegfeld Follies and Oklahoma! in 1943 to West Side Story, Cabaret, Company, Rent and Hamilton. There is a “time-out’ favorite for patrons, young and old, to pose for selfies with character models, such as Phantom of the Opera and the cast of Wicked. There are photo spots and Instagram spaces, “Interactive” as Boardman refers to it. You can also wear Tony’s original jacket from West Side Story or dance to Jerome Robbin’s choreography or to the music of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story on the Rooftop Arena.
The genius of David Rockwell’s “Making of a Broadway Show” provides visitors with a behind-the-curtain look at the duality of a Broadway theater production, backstage and on-stage, so the curtain can rise nightly and on matinee days, eight times a week.
While you’re there, be sure to visit a special, limited engagement, Disney on Broadway: 30 Years of Magic, running until January 5, 2025.
For tickets to the Museum of Broadway, visit themuseumofbroadway.com. Special discounts are available for students and seniors over 65.
