Broadway Show Girls

The Broadway House Guide

The Smallest Broadway Theaters

The fifteen smallest Broadway houses, ranked by seats. The Hayes Theater has about 597 seats — fewer than a third of the largest house.

  • 597seats at the Hayes
  • 6houses with 800 seats or fewer
  • 9houses under 1,000 seats
  • 500seats: the Broadway minimum

The short answer

The Hayes Theater is Broadway’s smallest house.

At about 597 seats, the Hayes Theater on West 44th Street is the smallest of the 41 houses in our guide. You may know it by an earlier name: the Helen Hayes Theatre. The next smallest is the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre at about 650 seats.

See the 15-house ranking ↓

A Broadway theater is, by the usual definition, a professional house of 500 or more seats in the Theater District or at Lincoln Center. The Hayes Theater at 240 West 44th Street sits closest to that line, followed by the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (650) and the Todd Haimes Theatre (740).

Seat count tells you the scale of a room, but not exactly how it feels from a particular seat. The Circle in the Square wraps its seats around a thrust stage; the Lyceum stacks its seats across three levels. Use the house links below to compare the layout before choosing a section.

How Broadway’s rooms compare

A count of all 41 houses in this guide. We use 800 seats or fewer as a working definition of an intimate Broadway room, not an official category.

6800 seats or fewer
16801 to 1,200 seats
19More than 1,200 seats

The full range runs from 597 at the Hayes to 1,933 at the Gershwin. Counts are approximate and can change with a production’s seating configuration.

The 15-house ranking

  1. Hayes Theater2 levels · Second Stage TheaterSeats597
  2. Samuel J. Friedman Theatre2 levels · Manhattan Theatre ClubSeats650
  3. Todd Haimes Theatre2 levels · Roundabout Theatre CompanySeats740
  4. Circle in the Square Theatrethrust, 1 level · Circle in the Square (independent)Seats776
  5. John Golden Theatre2 levels · The Shubert OrganizationSeats800
  6. Booth Theatre2 levels · The Shubert OrganizationSeats800
  7. Lyceum Theatre3 levels · The Shubert OrganizationSeats922
  8. Hudson Theatre3 levels · ATG EntertainmentSeats970
  9. Walter Kerr Theatre3 levels · ATG EntertainmentSeats975
  10. Studio 542 levels · Roundabout Theatre CompanySeats1,006
  11. Belasco Theatre3 levels · The Shubert OrganizationSeats1,016
  12. Music Box Theatre2 levels · The Shubert OrganizationSeats1,025
  13. Stephen Sondheim Theatre2 levels · Roundabout Theatre CompanySeats1,055
  14. Ethel Barrymore Theatre2 levels · The Shubert OrganizationSeats1,058
  15. Lena Horne Theatre2 levels · Nederlander OrganizationSeats1,069

Gold bars show each house’s seat count against the largest on Broadway (1,933).

Same size ranking, different rooms

Capacity alone cannot tell you the view. These houses show why the stage shape and number of levels matter when you pick a seat.

For a section-by-section starting point, read our guide to choosing Broadway seats.

On the Map

Highlighted: the houses on this list. Tap any dot for its guide.

Schematic map of Broadway theaters, 41st to 54th StreetEach dot is a Broadway house placed by its street address, almost all between Sixth and Eighth Avenues. North is up.54535251504948474645444342418th Ave7th Ave6th AveBroadwayTimes SqAl Hirschfeld Theatre — 1,404 seatsAmbassador Theatre — 1,125 seatsAugust Wilson Theatre — 1,225 seatsBelasco Theatre — 1,016 seatsBernard B. Jacobs Theatre — 1,100 seatsBooth Theatre — 800 seatsBroadhurst Theatre — 1,218 seatsBroadway Theatre — 1,763 seatsCircle in the Square Theatre — 776 seatsEthel Barrymore Theatre — 1,058 seatsEugene O'Neill Theatre — 1,108 seatsGerald Schoenfeld Theatre — 1,079 seatsGershwin Theatre — 1,933 seatsHayes Theater — 597 seatsHudson Theatre — 970 seatsImperial Theatre — 1,457 seatsJames Earl Jones Theatre — 1,092 seatsJohn Golden Theatre — 800 seatsLena Horne Theatre — 1,069 seatsLongacre Theatre — 1,077 seatsLunt-Fontanne Theatre — 1,505 seatsLyceum Theatre — 922 seatsLyric Theatre — 1,622 seatsMajestic Theatre — 1,681 seatsMarquis Theatre — 1,612 seatsMinskoff Theatre — 1,710 seatsMusic Box Theatre — 1,025 seatsNederlander Theatre — 1,235 seatsNeil Simon Theatre — 1,467 seatsNew Amsterdam Theatre — 1,702 seatsPalace Theatre — 1,648 seatsRichard Rodgers Theatre — 1,400 seatsSamuel J. Friedman Theatre — 650 seatsShubert Theatre — 1,502 seatsSt. James Theatre — 1,709 seatsStephen Sondheim Theatre — 1,055 seatsStudio 54 — 1,006 seatsTodd Haimes Theatre — 740 seatsWalter Kerr Theatre — 975 seatsWinter Garden Theatre — 1,600 seatsN ↑ · Vivian Beaumont: Lincoln Center, W 65th St (off map)
Schematic, not to scale: every house placed by its street address. Tap a dot for the house; on a phone, swipe the map sideways.

Questions, Answered

What is the smallest Broadway theater?
The Hayes Theater (formerly the Helen Hayes Theatre) at 240 West 44th Street, with about 597 seats. It is operated by Second Stage Theater.
How many seats does the Helen Hayes Theatre have?
The theater now called the Hayes Theater has about 597 seats. Helen Hayes Theatre is one of its former names.
What is considered an intimate Broadway theater?
There is no single official intimate-house cutoff. For this guide we use 800 seats or fewer; 6 of the 41 current Broadway houses meet that working definition.
How many seats does a theater need to count as Broadway?
Broadway houses are generally defined as professional theaters with 500 or more seats in Manhattan’s Theater District or at Lincoln Center. Smaller professional houses are Off-Broadway (roughly 100–499 seats) or Off-Off-Broadway.
Which Broadway theaters have fewer than 1,000 seats?
9 houses: Booth Theatre, Circle in the Square Theatre, Hayes Theater, Hudson Theatre, John Golden Theatre, Lyceum Theatre, Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, Todd Haimes Theatre and Walter Kerr Theatre.
Are small Broadway theaters only for plays?
No. Capacity describes the building, not which kind of production may play there. Compare the stage and seating levels on each house page before buying a ticket.

Every figure here is derived from the house-by-house facts in our guide, each cited to the theater’s Wikipedia article and checked 2026-10-09. Seat counts are approximate — capacity shifts a little with each production. Spot an error?Tell us.