More than a typical renovation, the new Delacorte Theater inside Central Park is an undertaking of rebirth. Ennead Architects approached the feat, which started with a masterplan a decade ago, slightly differently than when designing a typical cultural site.
'Every cultural project is unique in terms of the way it engages with the urban fabric,' the firm’s partner Stephen Chu tells Wallpaper*. Delacorte owes its particular resonance in the public consciousness to its annual Free Shakespeare in the Park initiative, which has been run by New York’s Public Theater for over half a century. From its gnarly complimentary ticket lines that form with the dawn, to star-studded contemporary takes on Shakespeare’s time-defying themes, the beloved landmark embodies New York’s storied cultural capital. A newcomer Meryl Streep appeared in The Taming of the Shrew and Measure for Measure here in the mid-1970s; in 2010, Al Pacino was The Merchant of Venice’s Shylock on this stage.
View of the old Delacorte Theater from Belvedere Castle
Chu has been well aware of the commission’s civic aspect, not only through his firm’s 25-year-long collaboration with The Public Theater, including a recent facelift of its downtown headquarters, but also as a returning audience member at their summer plays in the park. 'Working on Public’s main building, which was once New York Public Library’s first location, was a good parallel to understanding what it means to bring theatre to an existing scenic landmark,' says Chu. A main challenge was redefining a symbolic landmark with sharply placed advancements and hospitable visual cues.
Occupying a 37,900 sq ft site by the Great Lawn and Belvedere Castle, Delacorte Theater’s $85 million revitalisation project includes the 32,475 sq ft building with 1,864 seats, as well as ramps with enhanced accessibility, two new gates, six lighting towers with gantry beams, the back-of-house for actors and staff, and ticketing and concession desks. At the core of the studio’s vision was the bold decision to preserve only the existing steel skeleton and 'completely strip it down to nothing, so it is technically a new building built around existing iron angle trusses', says Chu.
The main theatre’s fluted, slightly tilted wood exterior lends a sculptural, somewhat adventurous character to the venue's new phase. Chu says the team's strategy was to create 'a fresh and exciting presence'. This is immediately manifested in what he calls a 'conical and voluminous' redwood façade. A currently endangered material, the redwood was reclaimed from around 25 local disused water tanks. An extended 18ft canopy adds to the welcoming feel, not only for theatregoers but for any park-stomper in need of a shady spot any time of day. 'We wanted to sit well within the existing treescape,' says Chu, who notes that his team were careful not to expand the theatre’s existing footprint, out of respect to the surrounding fauna. Their guiding principle throughout the design process was to 'feel like the building emerged out of the site as opposed to [having landed] there'.
Free Shakespeare in the Park returned to the new Delacorte in August 2025 with a whimsical adaptation of Twelfth Night, directed by The Public Theater’s associate artistic director Saheem Ali. The who’s-who cast, including Lupita Nyong’o, Peter Dinklage, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Sandra Oh, espoused the gender-swapping comedy’s witty lines on the brand-new stage under a state-of-the art lighting design, which benefits from a two-tier structure for more flexibility and practicality.
In this renovation, imagination perhaps played a slightly larger role for Chu’s team than in most other design projects. An effortless but noticeably elevated outdoor theatre ritual for both audience and staff required envisioning every step of the experience. 'We knew we had to create a sculptural fine-millwork piece that was out there living by the Great Lawn,' says Chu, who made sure to equally prioritise the theatre’s past and future: 'There is a great respect for history but also a desire for optimism for the future – both are important, so this project had to play a delicate balance.'
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