Lucille Lortel Theatre

The Lucille Lortel Theatre began its life in 1926 as a movie house called the New Hudson, where local audiences watched films in a space that seated nearly six hundred people. Decades later, the building underwent a dramatic transformation to become the home of experimental drama. In 1955, the financier Louis Schweitzer gave the venue to his wife, the actress and producer Lucille Lortel, as an anniversary present. She spent her career turning the space into a laboratory for avant-garde works that mainstream Broadway stages often ignored.