“How quickly a theatre grows old-fashioned! Every summer I make improvements in this house and have already spent enough money to build another theatre. At the present time of writing I have just installed a new lighting system, the result of years of experimenting by Louis Hartman, my valued old friend and electrician, who is to be found in the theatre from morning until night, and whose only pleasure is in his work. I think we have revolutionized stage lights, and I have no doubt that our innovations will find their way to foreign countries.... As my whole life is passed in my theatre, I have a studio there of several rooms devoted to my work and collections. In the latter I take great pride....
“I have picked up much interesting furniture for my workroom, but, despite the joy I take in these things, I write with greatest comfort on a little sewing-table covered with green baize,—a relic of my attic days.... I really know of no other manager whose delight in his playhouse is greater than mine.... Here I spend my life and here I shall, I hope, end my days.”
The second Belasco Theatre (originally called David Belasco’s Stuyvesant Theatre, by which name it was known until the fall of 1910) stands on the north side of West Forty-fourth Street, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, on lots Nos. 111 to 121, inclusive. The site has a front of 105 feet and a depth of 100 feet. The building is of red brick and white stone, simple and graceful, in the style of architecture denominated as Colonial. It was, originally, three stories high, with a rectangular, tower-like eminence at the southwest corner. The entrance from the street is into a small lobby, at the right of which are large swinging doors opening into a clear space which extends, behind the orchestra seats, parallel with Forty-fourth Street, from side to side of the auditorium. In this playhouse,
Photograph by Byron. Author’s Collection.
BELASCO IN HIS WORKSHOP
Inscription on Back:
“Genius doesn’t burn this morning, dear friend!—D. B.”