Union Square Theatre was the name of two different theatres near Union Square, Manhattan, New York City. The first was a Broadway theatre that opened in 1870, was converted into a cinema in 1921 and closed in 1936. The second was an Off-Broadway theatre that opened in 1985 and closed in 2016.
58 East 14th Street
The original Union Square Theater in 1887
The first theatre with this name in New York City was located at 58 East 14th Street. It opened in 1870 and played a mixture of plays and operettas. It staged Oscar Wilde's first play, Vera; or, The Nihilists. After 1883, it hosted vaudeville as part of the B. F. Keith Circuit and Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit. In 1921, it was renamed the Acme Theatre and converted into a cinema that eventually showed Soviet films and closed in 1936. The original structure was revealed during a November 1992 demolition of Union Square between 4th Avenue & Broadway, and was finally demolished in December. Today the site is a flagship branch of Citibank.
The second theatre was located at 100 East 17th Street (also known as 44 Union Square) in the former Tammany Hall building, built in 1929. It opened in 1994 and was operated by Liberty Theatres. On January 3, 2016, the theater was closed as part of a complete renovation of the building, including the planned demolition of the theatre. Its longest-running productions were Slava's Snowshow, for 28 months, and Wit, for 18 months. Its final production was The 39 Steps.
