The AMT Theater, formerly the Davenport Theatre is an Off-Broadway theater venue located at 354 West 45th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues in the

Hell's Kitchen Hell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton, is a neighborhood on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is considered to be bordered by 34th Street (or 41st Street) to the south, 59th Street to the north, Eighth Avenue to the ea ...

neighborhood of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, New York City. It was operated by Off-Broadway producer Ken Davenport in a building owned by Gran Logia de Lengua Española Vales De Nueva York. Previously called the 45th Street Theatre,45th Street Theatre
at the

Internet off-Broadway Database The Internet Off-Broadway Database (IOBDB), also formerly known as the Lortel Archives, is an online database that catalogues theatre productions shown off-Broadway. The IOBDB was funded and developed by the non-profit Lucille Lortel Foundatio ...

the Davenport Theatre was leased by producer Ken Davenport in 2014 and renamed after his great-grandfather, Delbert Essex Davenport, a producer, publicist, and author in the early 1900s. The Davenport Theatre had two performances spaces, a 149-seat main stage on the ground floor and a 99-seat

black box In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a system which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). The te ...

recently renovated and renamed, The Loft at the Davenport Theatre on the third floor. In 2019, the theater was converted to NYC Tango, a dance hall. Following the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, the building reopened in 2022 as AMT Theater with ''An Unbalanced Mind''.

Theatre history

*1984–2004 –

Primary Stages Primary Stages was founded in 1984 by Casey Childs as an Off-Broadway not-for-profit theater company. In 2004, Primary Stages moved from its 99-seat home of 17 years at Davenport Theatre, 354 West 45th Street to the 199-seat theater at 59E59 Theat ...

*2007–2012 – 45th Street Theatre (some overlap with Primary Stages) *2013 – New Theatre at 45th Street *2014– 2018 – Davenport Theatre *2019 – New York City Tango

Building history

The five-story building was built in 1915 as an

electric substation A substation is a part of an electrical generation, transmission, and distribution system. Substations transform voltage from high to low, or the reverse, or perform any of several other important functions. Between the generating station and c ...

by the United Electric Light & Power Company which promoted

alternating current Alternating current (AC) is an electric current which periodically reverses direction and changes its magnitude continuously with time in contrast to direct current (DC) which flows only in one direction. Alternating current is the form in whic ...

in the

war of the currents The war of the currents was a series of events surrounding the introduction of competing electric power transmission systems in the late 1880s and early 1890s. It grew out of two lighting systems developed in the late 1870s and early 1880s; arc ...

while New York Edison was promoting

direct current Direct current (DC) is one-directional flow of electric charge. An electrochemical cell is a prime example of DC power. Direct current may flow through a conductor such as a wire, but can also flow through semiconductors, insulators, or eve ...

. Although the direct current standard lost to ac in the war Edison had continued to electrify lower Manhattan with direct current and accounted for 90 percent of the electric power at the time against United's 10 percent. The substation in particular was aimed at providing reliable power to Broadway theatres and Times Square signs at a time when most theatres had direct current. In 1928 New York Edison began the process to adopt the AC standard and by 1935 had totally acquired United. After the building was decommissioned as a substation it became a

Masonic Lodge A Masonic lodge, often termed a private lodge or constituent lodge, is the basic organisational unit of Freemasonry. It is also commonly used as a term for a building in which such a unit meets. Every new lodge must be warranted or chartered ...

. The masonic emblem with the inscription "Gran Logia de Lengua Española Vales De Nueva York" still hangs over the entrance and the abbreviation ALGDGADU is also above the entrance. The abbreviation is interpreted from Spanish "A La Gloria Del Gran Arquitecto Del Universo" to say "to the Glory of the Great Architect of the Universe." According to the building's certificate of occupancy from 1959, the space was intended to be used as offices and a recording studio and had been used illegally as a theater space for several decades. As of September 2019, the theater portion of the building was converted to the New York City Tango dance hall.

Productions

Selected productions at the Davenport Theatre.Davenport Theatre
at the

References

External links

* {{Off-Broadway theatres Off-Broadway theaters Theatres in Manhattan Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan