Moving the Empire

ROTters probably know that I go to the Signature Theatre on W. 42nd Street often, though you probably don’t know how I get there.  I take the Broadway BMT subway to Times Square and then the M42 crosstown bus along 42nd to 10th Avenue.  The route passes the AMC Empire 25 at 234 W 42nd, the last street address on the south side of the street at 8th. 

When the bus goes past the AMC movie multiplex, I always think of the move (reported, with diagrams and all, in the NYT) of the entire Empire Theatre from its perch at 236 W. 42nd Street, in the middle of the southern side of the block between 7th and 8th Avenues, to the west end of the block to become the façade and lobby of the AMC Empire 25.  Does anyone else remember that almost-unbelievable feat in March 1998?

(Okay, I can’t explain how the AMC cineplex is at number 234 and the Empire was originally at number 236.  The Empire was in the middle of the block and the AMC is at the west end; house numbers on all cross streets in the Manhattan grid go up from 5th Avenue—on the West Side, that means increasing from east to west.  But the Empire’s old lot was east of AMC, yet it has a higher house number.  Theoretically, that’s impossible.  I double-, triple-, and quadruple-checked the theaters’ addresses, and the numbers are correct.  I can only guess that during the remaking of 42nd Street, the lots along the 200 block were renumbered, perhaps when some buildings were demolished or combined.)

The “New 42nd Street,” as the remaking of the strip was dubbed, was being planned and created.  A builder jacked up the Empire in the center of the block, put it on wheels, rolled it west almost to 8th Avenue, and set it into the south side of the street as the front of a new multiplex.

For those who are too young to know about this odd bit of New York City theater history, or weren’t around the Big Apple, or just plain don’t remember it—let me tell you how it went down.  Or, rather, west, as Horace Greeley (1811-72), great New York City newspaperman, might have pointed out.  (The editor of the New-York Tribune, which was publishing when the Empire was up and running as a Broadway playhouse, popularized the famous phrase “Go West, young man” in an editorial in 1865.)

Let me start with some “real”—that is, old—theater history.  The backstory, as we’d say today.

There have been, in fact, two Empire Theatres in New York City, both Broadway houses.  The first one was built in 1893 at 1430 Broadway, between 40th and 41st Streets.  A 1,100-seat theater, this Empire closed and was demolished in 1953 after 60 years of producing both revivals and first-run plays.  It plays a small role in this story.

(The 41st Street Empire had a shot at a second act, too.  When it was torn down, Robert Porterfield, 1905-71, founder of the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, in 1933—one of the United States’ oldest and most esteemed regional rep theaters, salvaged many of the Empire’s interior furnishings and equipment.  Items recycled by Porterfield included seats, paintings, stage lights, and a lighting control system, some of which are still in use at the Barter today.  Perhaps it was a kind of forecast of what was to come 45 years later.)

The second Empire was originally named the Eltinge 42nd Street Theatre, only the eighth theater built on the street.  It was built for theatrical producer Al (Albert Herman) Woods (1870-1951) by noted theater architect Thomas W. Lamb (1871-1942), one of the foremost designers of theaters and cinemas in the U.S. during the 20th century.  Its Beaux Arts, polychromed (green, blue, orange, and red) terra cotta façade featured an immense arched window several stories high above the marquee.  Inside, a mural by French artist Arthur Brounet (1866-1941) adorned the lobby and the auditorium, with a richly detailed plaster ceiling and proscenium arch, was decorated in Roman, Greek, and Egyptian motifs. 

Woods specialized in light comedies and he named his theater for his most successful and profitable star, Julian Eltinge (1881-1941), who was best known for playing female roles.  Among the other stars Woods presented at the Eltinge were John Barrymore (The Yellow Ticket, 1914), Laurence Olivier (Murder on the Second Floor, his U.S. début, 1929), and Clark Gable (Love, Honor and Betray, 1930).

The 900-seat Eltinge. a small house, opened on 11 September 1912 with Within the Law by Bayard Veiller (1869-1943), which ran for 541 performances despite an outright pan from the New York Times.  The theater fared poorly after the stock market crash of 1929, and in 1931 Woods leased the Eltinge to Max Rudnick (1896-?) as a burlesque house.  Comedian Jackie Gleason (1916-87), later a television star, got his start here as the emcee and in 1935, Bud Abbott (1897-1974) and Lou Costello (1906-59), who’ll feature in the upcoming story of the theater’s move, met doing separate acts at the Eltinge.

Burlesque shows also featured strippers, and New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (1882-1947; in office: 1934-45), determined to close all the burlesque houses in the city, shuttered the Eltinge in 1937.  In 1942, after having been boarded up for five years, the Eltinge reopened as a movie theater called Laff Movie, a first-run house.  

By 1954, the Times Square neighborhood had begun to deteriorate. After the 41st Street Empire was razed, the Eltinge was renamed the Empire, becoming a second-run grindhouse screening low-budget horror, splatter, and exploitation films.  By the mid-1980s, Times Square had become so sleazy, with porn houses, peep shows, sex shops, drug sellers, and hookers inhabiting every street and corner, that nothing else could survive, and the Empire on 42nd Street closed its doors for good in 1986. 

According to a historic-preservation agreement reached in 1981 by New York City and New York State, the theater building couldn’t be demolished, however, and it stood, along with six others like it, derelict and ignored as the Theatre District went to wrack and ruin.  In 1990, however, the New 42nd Street, a non-profit organization, was formed to oversee the redevelopment of the seven neglected and historic theaters on 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues, including the Empire, and to reestablish the block as a desirable tourist destination. 

The Empire Theatre site at the center of the block became part of an entertainment complex planned by Forest City Ratner Companies, a Manhattan-based real estate development firm.  It occupied the eastern end of the project’s 42nd Street frontage, so the Empire was, as I already said, lifted and moved westward to 8th Avenue to become the entrance and lobby of the AMC Theatres cinema complex. 

Here’s how that happened.

The plan was announced in June 1996.  Forest City Ratner had been selected in 1994 to redevelop the property occupied by the Empire and the buildings next to it to the west.  AMC Entertainment, headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, had already been instrumental in persuading the Walt Disney Company to renovate the New Amsterdam Theatre (built in 1903) at 214 W. 42nd Street, east of the Empire, as the flagship for Disney Theatrical Productions on Broadway.  (That renovation of an architectural jewel of 42nd Street and one of the oldest surviving Broadway playhouses was completed in 1997 and Disney opened the New Amsterdam with The Lion King, which ran there for nine years before transferring to another Broadway house.)

Madam Tussauds, the British wax museum, had agreed to create a branch a few doors east of the AMC entrance using the same transplanted Empire as its space.  As a balance for the AMC entrance through the former Empire Theatre, Tussauds incorporated the façade of the Sam H. Harris Theatre (built in 1914) at 226 W. 42nd; the interior of the theater was demolished in 1997 to construct the museum and entertainment center.  (Madame Tussauds New York location opened in 2000.)

In order to clear the lot at 236 42nd Street, Ratner was confronted with a problem to solve.  The 1981 historic-preservation agreement prohibited razing the Empire Theatre, so Ratner had to choose between repurposing the building or moving it intact. 

Now, across the street from the Empire were situated two other historic playhouses: the Lyric Theatre at 213 W. 42nd Street, designed in 1903 by architect Victor Hugo Koehler, and the Academy Theatre at 223 W. 42nd, built in 1910 by Eugene De Rosa.  Both theaters were slated for demolition by the New 42nd Street, so Canadian producer Garth Drabinsky (b. 1949) of Livent purchased them in 1996 and created the Ford Center for the Performing Arts by combining elements of both old theaters.  (The Ford Center opened in January 1998, but Livent declared bankruptcy in November 1998.  The theater, now under new ownership, was renamed the Lyric in 2014.)

This option, however, was obviated for the Empire because, explained Bruce Ratner, president of Forest City Ratner, the Empire blocked street-level access to large blocks of space along 42nd Street that would become other commercial enterprises in the development.  In addition, the engineers said that it would be easier to move the entire building than to take out parts of the old one and incorporate them into a new structure as Drabinsky had done with the Ford Center.  One proposal, for instance, had been to dismantle the Beaux-Arts façade of the theater and reassemble it up the block, but the architects determined it would cost as much to do that as it would to move the whole building.

So, that left only moving the 85-year-old historic theater without damaging its façade and ornate plaster ceiling and proscenium arch.  New York State hired Robert Silman, a structural engineer, to assure that the Empire’s auditorium with its eccentric interior design, including figures in Egyptian headdresses playing pipes, could be moved without falling apart.  Ratner said that approvals for the move from the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and other agencies had all been obtained.

“People have moved bigger things in the world,” said Ratner, but Silman added, “One doesn’t often move buildings of this size in the middle of a congested urban setting."  Common wisdom asserts that the Empire Theater is the largest structure ever moved in New York City.  Silman explained: “It really doesn’t matter how heavy it is as long as you put enough stuff underneath to hold it up.” 

The engineer observed, “The concept is elegantly simple”—as we’ll be able to judge for ourselves shortly.  “This is nothing more than a classical shoring job,” said Anthony J. Mazzo, a senior vice president of Urban Foundations/Engineering of Brooklyn, which did the work.  “The horizontal move is secondary.”  Mazzo explained: “It’s like using a dolly to move a piece of furniture.”

The literally inch-by-inch journey of the Empire Theatre from the middle of the 200 block of 42nd Street to its new resting place was a mere 168 feet, 0.16 of the length of the block.

An earlier moving date—Tuesday, 17 February—had been scheduled, but the job was postponed so that the work could be done over a weekend.  The theater had therefore been hoisted onto its tracks for over a week, reducing the time it took on 1 March to accomplish the move.  Further decreasing the time and distance for the trip west was a test-run on Sunday, 22 February, when the building was shifted 30 feet to make sure the process would work.  It did, and the remaining move on the 1st would be only 138 feet.   It took four hours, from 7 in the morning of 1 March until around 11 o’clock.   

At a cost of $1.2 million (about $1.9 million today), that comes out to $588 an inch ($927 today)!  Some other stats: the Empire Theatre building was estimated to weigh 3,700 tons, or 7.4 million pounds.  (That makes the haulage rate 16¢ a pound—pretty cheap, considering.)  It took three months, starting in November 1997, to prepare the building for transport.  The building moved west at about 35 feet per hour. 

To prepare the theater for transit, a steel platform was constructed inside the building at its base.  To prevent the building from being damaged during the move, steel beams were welded to the underside of the platform and fastened to the building’s walls to support them.  The theater walls were rigidly braced so that the building wouldn’t twist or warp during the move.  

Beneath the building and next to it, eight steel tracks were laid, stretching from the theater’s original site to its new location across the block.  The platform with the theater on top was lifted up one-eighth of an inch by vertical hydraulic jacks so that steel rollers could be installed between the platform and the rails.  The jacks lowered the platform onto the rollers, transferring the weight of the building onto the track system, then the jacks were removed.  Then the theater was separated from its foundation by cutting through the walls at their base.  As I reported earlier, this was accomplished by 17 February, 12 days before the final move.

Another set of hydraulic jacks attached to the rails, horizontally oriented, then pushed the platform holding the theater, without putting any pressure directly on the building, along the tracks to the theater’s new foundation.  On 22 February, a week before the final leg, eastbound traffic was halted along the 200 block of 42nd Street and the jacks impelled the theater the first 30 feet of its journey to test the system.  “Everything had to be perfect,” said Heymi Kuriel, vice president of Urban Foundation.  “Every bolt had to be tested.” 

The jacks moved the platform with the building on top five feet along its route in about five minutes (that is, one foot a minute); then the jacks were repositioned and the five-foot advance was repeated until the journey was completed. 

On 1 March, with the south side of the roadway closed again, the Empire Theatre was moved the last 138 feet to its new home.  Leading the way, attached to the front (that is, the westbound) end of the slow-moving theater building were two huge balloons . . . in the shapes of Lou Costello and Bud Abbott, the two renowned comics who met at the Eltinge in its burlesque days and formed a successful partnership that lasted the rest of their lives.  It seemed as if they were tugging the old Empire down the street.

A new foundation at 234 W. 42nd Street had been prepared for the old building and the theater was lowered into place.  New walls between the foundation and the base of the structure filled in the portions that were removed for the relocation.

The Empire was touched up and appointed to serve as the ticket lobby for AMC Empire 25, which opened in April 2000.  Moviegoers ascend escalators through the old theater’s proscenium opening—where the stage would have been (lost, along with the theater’s fly-loft)—to the upper floors where the movie screens are. 

The 25 film theaters on the upper four floors in the complex—only the entrance is on the street level—range from under 200 seats to about 400 (for a total capacity of nearly 5,000 seats).  (Much of the AMC building, designed by the firm of Beyer Blinder Belle of New York City and Washington, D.C., noted for its work in architectural preservation and adaptive re-use, is actually behind the Empire and Tussauds, essentially on 41st Street, although there is no public access from that street.)

“Simple,” as engineer Robert Silman characterized the process, but only because it was straightforward—not because it was easy.  Complicating the operation was the fact that the Times Square Theatre District is built on turn-of-the-century residential lots, so the Empire sat on ground once occupied by townhouses with basements, excavated out of the bedrock which is usually right below the island’s surface. 

Urban Foundations/Engineering had to drive piles down into the now-lowered bedrock along the route of the transfer and the track system was laid over the piles.  This was necessary so that bedrock. that supports Manhattan’s skyscrapers, would bear the weight of the Empire Theatre, rather than the loose dirt filling the old cellars.  “Essentially, we have constructed a temporary steel bridge founded on rock to support the building during its transfer,” Urban’s Mazzo said.  The piles had to be removed after the transfer so that the commercial properties could be built.

When the empire Theatre arrived at its new site, it was greeted by a crowd of dignitaries which included New York State Governor George E. Pataki (b. 1945; in office: 1995-2006).  Kuriel remarked, “It’s amazing how smooth it went.  The birds at the top didn’t even move,” he added, referring to the nests near the old theater’s roof.

[There were many critics of the remaking of 42nd Street in the ’90s.  Most said the New 42nd Street organization was sanitizing the neighborhood; the word “Disney-fy” was used often.  Some advocates for the area’s longtime residents and mom-and-pop shop-owners pointed out that the lower-income residents were being displaced for wealthier folks and big corporations.  That was probably at least partly so.

[I’m not here, however, to argue for or against the renewal of the Theatre District and whether it was an ultimate good or not.  I’m just reporting on one event in local theater history that was, inarguably, an engineering feat that I found fascinating and noteworthy.

[Let me recount an illustrative anecdote from my own experience.  In 1982 or ’83, I took a trip to Egypt.  I was principally in Cairo, but I took a one-day jaunt to Abu Simbel, site of two massive rock temples situated on the western bank of Lake Nasser. 

[Now, Lake Nasser was created as a result of the construction of the Aswan High Dam across the waters of the Nile between 1958 and 1970.  It would have submerged the great temples, which were carved out of the mountainside  along the river in the 13th century BCE . . . if nothing were done to prevent the loss.  So an international team of archaeologists proposed to move them to safer ground—including building an artificial mountain on the shores of the new lake-to-be.

[When I saw the temples from the air—you fly from Cairo to Abu Simbel Airport—my imagination conjured up the meeting of the archaeologists and the Egyptian government when the proposal for the project was broached.  ‘You want to move what WHERE!?’ I heard an official gasp.

[Well, that’s sort of the way I felt about the idea of lifting the Empire Theatre up and rolling it up the block and replanting it.  ‘You want to move what WHERE!?’  But they did.  Astonishing!]