Westbury Music Fair
| Former names | Westbury Music Fair (1956-2005) North Fork Theatre in Westbury (2005-08) Capital One Bank Theatre at Westbury (2008-09) Theatre at Westbury (2009-10) NYCB Theatre at Westbury (2010- ) |
|---|---|
| Address | 960 Brush Hollow Rd Jericho, New York 11753 |
| Owner | Live Nation Entertainment |
| Type | In the round |
| Capacity | 1,800 (1956-66) 2,870 (1966- ) |
| Construction | |
| Opened | June 18, 1956 |
| Renovated | 1965, 1992 |
| Construction cost |
$120,000 (original) $1 million (1965 renovations) |
| Website | |
| Official website | |
The NYCB Theater at Westbury (originally known as the Westbury Music Fair) is an entertainment venue located in the hamlet of Jericho, New York. Constructed as a theater in the round style with seating for 2,870 that was originally developed as a means to present top performers and productions of popular theatrical musicals at a series of venues located in suburban locations on the East Coast of the United States. NYCB stands for New York Community Bank, who purchased the naming rights in 2010.
Radio broadcaster Frank Ford and nightclub owner Lee Guber were returning home with their wives after attending a 1954 musical performance presented in a tent. After the two kept commenting on how they could improve on the show they had just seen, Ford's wife told them "Well, why don't you". They went ahead with the idea, leading the creation of Music Fair Enterprises, Inc. Together with Shelly Gross, a television news anchor who had become disenchanted with his profession, the three raised $100,000 to lease the Devon, Pennsylvania site of what they named the Valley Forge Music Fair, which brought in profits exceeding $50,000 in its inaugural season in 1955.
An abandoned lime pit in Westbury, New York, a Long Island suburb of New York City, became the site of their second facility, the Westbury Music Fair. The original facility was an uninsulated blue-and-beige striped tent erected in 1956 that could accommodate 1,850, one of many similar tent-based theaters that existed nationwide in the mid-1950s. The tent was erected for $120,000 at a central Nassau County location conveniently located near the Northern State Parkway and the Wantagh State Parkway, though it was also on an approach path for planes landing at what later became John F. Kennedy International Airport, with noise from jet engines of planes overhead occasionally drowning out performers.
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