Sony Hall occupies the Paramount Hotel basement where Billy Rose opened the Diamond Horseshoe nightclub in December 1938; after it closed in 1951 the space was a skating rink and then an off-Broadway house before reopening as a concert venue in March 2018.
The room sits below street level in a basement space that still reflects its nightclub-era design rather than a purpose-built modern club, with a mix of standing floor and some seating.
The address belongs to the Paramount Hotel, built in the late 1920s to a design by Thomas W. Lamb, an architect otherwise known for movie palaces; the hotel's facade was designated a city landmark in 2009, though nothing protects the basement. Billy Rose took the hotel's old grill room in December 1938 and opened the Diamond Horseshoe there, a nostalgia revue house whose chorus line, the Long-Stemmed Roses, was recruited entirely from women over six foot two. It closed in 1951 as audiences moved away from that kind of spectacle.
Then came four decades of failed second acts. The basement was a skating rink under the name Sonja Henie Ice Palace, an off-Broadway house called the Mayfair from 1961, a burlesque room, and a series of theaters under other names, with repeated attempts to make it work as a concert hall, supper club or discotheque. The immersive dinner-theater production Queen of the Night ran here from the last night of 2013 to the last night of 2015, booked originally for six weeks.
It reopened in March 2018 as Sony Hall. The distinction to hold onto is that Blue Note Entertainment Group owns, operates and books it; Sony's role is the name and the audio and video technology installed throughout. The design keeps the nightclub logic: curved banquettes stepped in tiers, antique faceted mirrors above them, and a ceiling of small domes framing a central ellipse fitted with a fiber-optic night sky. It holds roughly a thousand standing or five hundred seated, and serves a full menu through the show.
That flexibility puts it between two other rooms here. Birdland seats you at a table for a jazz set; the Beacon assigns you a seat in a theater. Sony Hall can do either, or clear the floor entirely, which is why its calendar swings between soul revues, tribute nights, singer-songwriters and comedy rather than settling on a genre.
235 W 46th St, New York, NY 10036 · Official site ↗
Sony Hall is a concert venue operated by Blue Note Entertainment Group located on West 46th Street in the Theater District, Manhattan, New York City. Like many theaters in NYC, it has served many functions since its opening in 1938. Located in the basement of the Paramount Hotel, it began as Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe nightclub where the 1945 film Diamond Horseshoe was filmed, and later spent time as a burlesque theater before becoming a legitimate Broadway theater under the names Century Theatre, Mayfair Theatre, and Stairway Theatre. As a Broadway theater, it is best known for the transfer of the Tony Award-winning original Broadway production of On Golden Pond in 1979. After becoming a private venue through the 1980s and remaining mostly closed through the 1990s and 2000s, it reemerged in 2013 after a 20-million-dollar renovation as a theater hosting the immersive production Queen of the Night. It is currently run as a live music performance venue showcasing audio and visual technology by Sony.
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