Photo Credit: Roving Rube. Viewpoint: 43rd St. just west of Times Square, looking south; 2/3/02 1:18 PM.

Notes (Roving Rube): This is another attempt at stitching a 3-picture panorama together, more demanding than others so far attempted here, since it involves a single building with a whole lot of parallel lines. The Rube vowed to fight the picture to the death, but fortunately for the continuance of this site, after become more and more confused over whether the picture needed next to be tilted, skewed, pinched, or de-spherized, he decided it would be better to just to take back the whole vow thing.

This is the 43rd Street entrance to the Lyric Theater, which has been cleaned up and restored by the Ford Foundation, and now houses a production of "42nd Street".

The theater was built in 1903 to house a light opera company.

"In the boxes, wicker armchairs were mixed equally with straight-backed chairs, the armchairs, no doubt, for the gents, the straight-back chairs for the ladies." (Elegant New York, by John Tauranac and Christopher Little).

The stage and seating were laid out parallel to the street, so visitors could enter equally well from either 43rd or 42nd streets.

In 1976, Robert DeNiro entered from the 42nd St. side with Cybill Shepherd. At that time the Lyric was a porno theater.

This was in the movie "Taxi Driver", and DeNiro's title character was so messed up he didn't even realize what a rotten choice for a first date a dirty movie was.