Ticket Information
Box Office Hours
Tuesday–Friday: 12:00PM–Evening Curtain
Saturday-Sunday: 10:00AM-Evening Curtain
Tickets
Purchase tickets online, at the theatre box office, or by phone at 212-239-6200.
Group Tickets (10+)
Book online or call 800-714-8452.
Location
About This Theatre
The Helen Hayes Theater, previously called the Little Theatre, was built in 1912 by Winthrop Ames as a 299-seat venue to avoid a fire department regulation that required a 10-foot alley on either side of auditoriums seating 300 or more.
A wealthy New Englander and Harvard graduate, Ames financed the construction with his inheritance money from Ames Shovel and Tool Company. Ames was interested in the Little Theater Movement and wanted to build an intimate venue where audiences felt like they were sitting in a living room watching a play. Ames, who had studied architecture, contributed to the design and worked closely with two young architects with no theater experience, Harry Creighton Ingalls and F. Burrall Hoffman, who had studied at the École de Beaux-Arts in Paris. Designed to look like a colonial New England house, the theatre was adorned with redbrick laid in the Flemish bond style, alternating long and short bricks, shutters on the windows, and iron balconies. The interior was designed in the plainer neo-Colonial or Federal style, a departure from most other Broadway theatres that were more formal. In 1920 Herbert J. Krapp redesigned the theatre and added a balcony to accommodate additional seating. The theatre was renovated again in 1979 and renamed the Helen Hayes in 1983 after the original theatre of that name was torn down to make room for the New York Marriott Marquis.
Becky Shaw is next up at the Hayes Theater.
The Helen Hayes has 597 seats and is Second Stage Theater‘s only Broadway theatre.
Partners
This theatre opened as the Winthrop Ames in 1912, became the Little in 1957, and finally, in 1983, was named the Helen Hayes Theatre. In the spring of 2015, it was acquired by Second Stage Theater. Under Second Stage’s ownership, it is the only Broadway theatre dedicated exclusively to living American playwrights. Designed by David Rockwell of the Rockwell Group, the newly renovated and upgraded theatre officially reopened in March 2018 with Kenneth Lonergan’s