Volume 77 / Number 51 - May 21 - 27, 2008
West and East Village, Chelsea, Soho, Noho, Little Italy, Chinatown and Lower East Side, Since 1933

The articulation of O’Neill Playhouse plans cometh

As first reported by The Villager last week, New York University is now planning to preserve the Provincetown Playhouse at 133 MacDougal St. while constructing a new university building around it. Shortly after The Villager’s report, N.Y.U., saying it was “articulating” its plans for the project, released the above renderings. The images show, in blue, the legendary theater space, both in the existing building, at left, and as it would remain in the same location in the new project, which would be 17,000 square feet larger, but only slightly taller, than the current building. N.Y.U. would renovate the theater, but says it would try to retain as much of its historic fabric as possible. The theater’s MacDougal St. facade would be preserved and restored to its circa-1940 appearance and thus be clearly distinct from the new project’s facade. The Provincetown Playhouse is one of the most hallowed sites in American theater, where Eugene O’Neill, author of “The Iceman Cometh” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” staged his plays.