Opened in 1921 as The Ritz, The Walter Kerr Theater was designed by Herbert J. Krapp. It was built by the Shuberts as a sister theatre to their Ambassador Theatre on West 49th Street and constructed in a record sixty-days.


The interior featured an Italian Renaissance style with gold leaf and Italian scrollwork. Following decades of use as a broadcast studio and cinema, Jujamcyn Theaters purchased the theater in 1981 and completed a full restoration of the house in 1990. That same year, the theater was renamed the Walter Kerr in honor of the Pulitzer Prize–winning drama critic for the New York Times and the Herald Tribune. The inaugural production under the new name was August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Other Tony Award–winning productions including Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, Proof, and Clybourne Park have graced its stages.