59E59 Theaters
New York City
uRED Architecture

Small theater makes space for arts amid a retail and residential district

© Frank Oudeman

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Envisioned by Elysabeth Kleinhans, the president and artistic director of the Elysabeth Kleinhans Theatrical Foundation, the 59E59 Theaters building provides a state-of-the-art theater space for nonprofit theater companies in a neighborhood lacking performing arts venues. It is the first significant building and theatrical project undertaken by Ured Architecture. (Franke, Gottsegen, Cox Architects acted as project consultants.) An adaptive reuse of a commercial building, the 59E59 Theaters comprise three intimate black-box theaters that respectively accommodate 199, 99, and 50 seats. The site has a narrow footprint, measuring just 36-by-100 feet. New inner levels create space for a vertical bank of dressing rooms at the rear of the building, as well as control rooms, sophisticated theatrical infrastructure, and visitors’ facilities.

The building's new street facade is comprised of a glazed curtain wall with triple-laminated wire glass and custom-extruded aluminum fin-like vertical mullions attached to a raw, yet finely detailed exposed steel frame engineered by Guy Nordenson. Audience members reach the theaters through a multilevel stairway and lobby located directly behind this glass curtain wall. The architects attempted to make this "front of the house" space a symbolic proscenium arch, with the glazed lobby and its five flights of grated stairways acting as a curtain between the exterior, urban and the interior, private spaces. As audience members ascend and descend, they become performers.

The window mullions and glass curtain wall extend in a syncopated fashion over the roofline and help this small building to assert its presence amid taller neighbors. The uneven curtain wall moves at different speeds and angles, transforming the façade into an op-art vertical louver. It helps usher in a space for performing arts in an otherwise solidly retail and residential neighborhood.

Formal name of Project:
59E59 Theaters

Location:
New York City

Gross square footage:
11,000 sq. ft.

Total construction cost:
$6.5 Million

Owner:
The Elysabeth Kleinhans Theatrical Foundation, Inc.
Elysabeth Kleinhans, President and Artistic Director
www.59E59.org

Architect:
uRED Architecture
240 Central Park South
New York, NY 10019
212-397-2707
fax 212-246-6852
e-mail: info@ured.org
www.ured.org