Lena Horne to Get Broadway Theater Renamed for Her
thewrap.compassed away in May 2010.This will mark the first time a Broadway theater has been named for a Black woman. The theater, which opened in 1926 as the Mansfield, in 1961 became the first venue named for a theater critic, the longtime New York Times reviewer Brooks Atkinson.
In fact, Atkinson famously praised a performance by then-newcomer Horne in the 1939 musical “Blackbirds.”Last fall, the owners and operators of 39 Broadway theaters — commercial and nonprofit — as well as the Broadway League and Actors’ Equity Association to improve diversity and inclusion in the industry.
Broadway’s three biggest commercial landlords — the Shubert, Nederlander and Jujamcyn organizations — each promised at least one of its theaters would be named for a Black artist.
Jujamcyn already runs the August Wilson Theatre, which it renamed for the late “Fences” playwright in 2005, and the Schuberts in March agreed to rebrand the Cort Theatre as the James Earl Jones Theater.
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