Jack Goldstein, a savior of Broadway theaters, dies at age 74

Jack Goldstein, a conservationist who responded to the destruction of several venerable Broadway theaters in the 1980s as part of a Times Square redevelopment plan by helping organize a successful campaign to give more than two dozen other theaters landmark status give, died June 16 in Cold Spring, New York, in Putnam County. He turned 74.

The cause was a heart attack, said Tom Miller, his executor.

For more than 30 years, Mr. Goldstein himself as an effective performer behind the scenes on Broadway. He was the executive director of the non-profit organization Save the Theaters, which was created to prevent the future destruction of theaters.

He was a manager Actors Equity Association, the trade union, and with the Theater Development Fundwhere he initiated the design competition that led to the creation of a new TKTS discount counter in Duffy Square, topped by a dramatic cascade of 27 ruby ​​red structural glass steps rising above West 47th Street.

“Jack had a great artistic eye and a deep commitment to good governance,” Gretchen Dijkstra, said the former president of the Times Square Business Improvement District in a telephone interview.

Mr. Goldstein arrived in Manhattan in the spring of 1982 during a difficult financial period for Broadway and around the time of the major demolition of the Helen Hayes and Morosco theatres — the most notable of the five theaters between West 45th and 46th Streets on Broadway that were razed to the ground to make way for the towering New York Marriott Marquis Hotel.

The sites of the Hayes and Morosco theaters had become the center of protests by actors, playwrights and other activists until the wrecking balls started swinging in March.

Mr. Goldstein told a conference at the Skyscraper Museum in Manhattan in 2014: “The destruction in the center of Broadway of beloved, important and, from the actors’ point of view, irreplaceable instruments of their art form and communication, was an insult.”

Mr. Goldstein, with a background in historic preservation, initially volunteered for the Committee to Save the Theaters, which was set up by Actors’ Equity. He soon moved on to join and then run the spin-off organization Save the Theaters.

“As it was clear that the city no longer recognized the value of Broadway theaters,” he told Metropolis, an architecture and interior design magazine, in 2004, “No. 1 on the agenda was to remove all available legal impediments to demolition in practice and apply it to the historical theatres.

For six years, Mr. Goldstein and other conservationists helped find a solution that focused on getting protection for as many theaters as possible from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Part of the process involved examining the interior and exterior of the theaters to determine which landmarks to designate—and convince the committee of their worthiness. He brought actors to the committee hearings to impart their knowledge of the theaters. And he collaborated with an architect, Hugh Hardy, on a report that emphasized the full geometry of the theaters—their shape, layout, and acoustic properties—rather than just their decorative details, as standards for landmark designation.

For example, speaking at the Skyscraper conference, Mr. Goldstein mentioned the “spatial relationships and building techniques behind the walls” that allowed actors to speak without a microphone or in a whisper and be heard by 600 to 1,400 theatergoers.

“He was eloquent and extremely energetic,” said Kent Barwick, a former chairman of the monuments commission, in an interview. “He did what he had to do at the time. Was he always right in his judgment? No. Was he always fair? No. Was he dramatic? Of course – he came from Actors’ Equity.”

In 1987, the commission designated 28 theaters as landmarks, some for their exteriors, some for their interiors, some for both. (The sale of the Mark Hellinger Theater to a church in 1991 brought the group to 27.) The city’s Board of Estimate, a powerful governing body at the time, approved the nominations in March 1988.

Theater owners objected to the landmark “as a confiscation of the building’s value because it limited its use to live theater”, Rocco Landesman, a former president of Jujamcyn Theaters said over the phone. He said of the buildings: “You couldn’t tear them down, and it was hard to build on top of them if you didn’t have the rights. Value was taken without compensation.”

The owners sued to revoke the landmark status of 22 of the theaters, but in 1992 the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case after the state Supreme Court and Appellate Division upheld the designation.

Jack Lewis Goldstein was born on March 5, 1949 in Jersey City, NJ. His father, Joseph, was an army officer and physician whose work took him and his family to various posts, including Maryland and Germany. His mother, Thelma (Ginsberg) Goldstein, was a homemaker, potter, and political activist. The couple eventually divorced.

His maternal grandmother took Jack to see his first Broadway show, the musical Oliver! by Lionel Bart, which opened at the Imperial Theater in 1963.

“‘Olivier!’ was the first time I experienced that suspension of disbelief,” he told Crain’s New York Business in 1998. “I wanted to play the character myself.”

Although he tried acting in school, he said he lacked the talent.

After graduating from the University of California, Berkley, Mr. Goldstein graduated from George Washington University in 1972 with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. He worked in Manhattan at the National Design Center, which exhibited home furnishings, before moving to Washington, where he became an assistant to the director of programs at the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, a small federal agency that would play a role in persuading him to go to Broadway.

While in Washington, the Department of the Interior, in response to a petition from conservationists, determined that the Morosco was eligible to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and that if the developer of the Marriott Marquis wanted to abort, it would need a waiver from the advisory board. Mr. Goldstein argued in an affidavit that Lyn Nofziger, an aide to President Ronald Reagan, told the board to allow the waiver or lose state funding — an allegation Mr. Nofziger denied.

Frustrated, Mr. Goldstein soon left Washington to join the Broadway conservators, whose efforts to save the Morosco were by then doomed.

After leaving Save the Theaters in 1988, he was a special assistant for government affairs to Ron Silver, the actor and president of Actors’ Equity, and the project director of the Broadway Initiatives Working Group, which was formed to evaluate the future of Broadway . From 1998 to 2001, he served as executive director of the nonprofit Theater Development Fund, which makes theater more affordable and accessible.

When he announced the competition to design a new TKTS booth in 1999, Mr. Goldstein realized how beloved and important the casual, pipe-and-canvas structure had become to theatergoers over 26 years. But, as he told The New York Times, “time and weather have taken their toll.”

The new TKTS booth was not completed until 2008, a year before Mr. Goldstein returned to Actors’ Equity as the national director of governance, policy and support.

In 2012, he became an antiques dealer in Cold Spring. He previously owned a seasonal antique store in Rehobobo, Del.

Mr. Goldstein – who is survived by his brother, Leonard – acknowledged his influence on Broadway.

“I think I’ve made a contribution when I walk down Times Square and see theaters full – many would have been wiped out,” he said. The Stream of the Highlands from Cold Spring in 2014. “I feel, ‘job done.'”