Manhattan: Broadway - 39th Street

NEW YORK'S OLD METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE MAKES WAY FOR OFFICE TOWER

Abandoned by the Metropolitan Opera Company, which gave its 1966-67 season in its new home in the Lincoln Center of Performing Arts, New York's old Metropolitan Opera House now is being demolished to make room for a 10-story office tower.

The new building was designed by the Offices of Irwin S. Chanin, Architect, which over the years has given the city, and the Middle Atlantic Coast from New England to Virginia, great office buildings, urban apartment houses, hotels, legitimate and motion picture theatres, suburban residential communities, a great shopping center and commercial and industrial buildings.

Erected in 1883, the old Metropolitan was the last survivor in a theatrical, opera and concert district, Mostly located south of 42nd Street, which over the years has moved northward by a mile or more with its spine, in general, still Broadway, upon which the old Metropolitan faced.

The new building, to contain about l-million square feet of office and commercial space, will stand on land that still belongs to the Metropolitan Opera Association. It has been leased for a long term of years to the sponsors of the office building, who will pay a ground rent of about $500,000 a year. The ground rent will help meet the operating deficit of the opera company.

Like all other opera companies and symphony orchestras, the Metropolitan Opera Company's box office receipts, even at capacity, cannot meet operating costs.