Laugh Factory / Show World Center / Times Square Arts Center
303 West 42nd Street / 669 Eight Avenue / 671 Eighth Avenue
I'm not sure exactly how everything on this block fits together
or of the history. Show World Center has been there since 1977 and
is one of the last survivors of Times Square's descent into hell in
the 1970s. The live girls are gone although, supposedly, there
are still physical remnants of its peep show days in the building.
The Times Square Arts Center is a more mysterious place. Although
it has no website, it is listed as the home of a number of
ethnic arts organizations. I believe it was once Nada Show World,
the expensive collection of four theatres that in the 1990s
lured Off-Off-Broadway impressario Aaron Beall away from his
nurturing lower East Side roots and into financial ruin.
The Laugh Factory is
the newest of the block's residents and apparently has an L-shaped
configuration that wraps around the Duane Reade drugstore on the
corner with a main entrance on the 42nd street side of the block.
I seem to recall that it also has a porn background but none
of the theatre history websites list any film or legitimate
theatre that may have been there back in the day.
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