Broadway History - The August Wilson Theatre

Built in 1925, The August Wilson Theatre, originally called the Guild Theatre and later the ANTA (American National Theatre and Academy) Playhouse and the Virginia Theatre, was founded as the home of The Theater Guild, a subscription-based drama club that presented high quality productions untainted by commercial considerations. In 1923 the Theater Guild formed a building committee, which included banker and philanthropist Otto Hermann Kahn and journalist Walter Lippmann, to raise funds for a permanent home. The architects C. Howard Crane and Kenneth Franzheim drew inspiration from fifteenth-century Tuscan villas, which set the theater apart from many others built in the neo-classical tradition of the time. When it first opened, the New York Times considered it the finest theater in New York. It housed classrooms, a clubroom for Guild stockholders, and a library. President Coolidge threw a switch at the White House in 1925, signaling the start of the theater's opening first production, a revival of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra starring Helen Hayes. The production was a huge flop and closed after forty-eight performances. In 1981 Jujamcyn Theaters purchased the house and renamed it the Virginia Theatre for co-owner Virginia McKnight Binger, daughter of William McKnight, an industrial magnate and Jujamycn founder. In 2005, the theater was renamed August Wilson in honor of the great American playwright.