Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at the renovation of the Delacorte Theater in Central Park and what the Delacorte means to the city. We’ll also look at President Trump’s possible involvement in the New York City mayor’s race.
Shakespeare in the Park is famous for the ticket lines and the time that restive New Yorkers spend waiting in them. There hasn’t been a line (or a Shakespeare in the Park performance) since 2023. But tonight, after an $85 million renovation of the Delacorte Theater, Shakespeare in the Park will return, with “Twelfth Night.” The Times’s architecture critic, Michael Kimmelman, got an advance look at the new Delacorte and says the renovation fixed the problems at the home of Shakespeare in the Park. I asked him to walk us through. What will we see from the audience that’s different and better? The differences will be clear before the audience arrives at its seats. The Delacorte used to look on the outside like a high school grandstand or a minor league stadium plunked in the middle of Central Park. It was a beloved eyesore. What people most loved was what happened onstage, not the theater itself. Now the facade has received a face-lift, so it’s slightly cone-shaped, wider at the top, a little jaunty. It’s clad in reclaimed redwood from 25 decommissioned city water tanks, a nice touch. I hadn’t realized so many water tanks in New York are made with redwood! The old theater also had no ceremonial entrance, nothing to suggest that what happened inside was going to be special. The facade had a skanky little metal skirt canopy above the ticket booth, which was not air-conditioned, so the workers handing out tickets always looked a little like captive prisoners. Now there’s a swooping marquee, air-conditioning for the ticket booth attendants and a sense of occasion. On the inside, the amphitheater doesn’t look very different, but it is easier to navigate, with more room for wheelchairs and wider seats. But the most significant changes won’t be seen by the audience, will they? That’s right. Where most of the $85 million went was to backstage upgrades — the electrical system, new light towers, a new stage, better dressing rooms. The old theater leaked. Raccoons nested under the bleachers during the winter. Actors were rained on while they put on their costumes. Some actors turned down gigs at the Delacorte just because it was a difficult place to work. From a theatergoer’s perspective, the changes will streamline operations, which opens up the possibility of longer summer seasons. This translates into many thousands more people being able to experience free Shakespeare in the Park. Wasn’t this renovation less ambitious than what was originally planned? The Public Theater, which runs the Delacorte, had thought about just starting from scratch and building a new architectural showpiece with a retractable roof, so productions could stretch into the cold-weather months. But that would have been incredibly expensive. And it would have occupied a much larger footprint in the park, which the city’s Parks Department and the Central Park Conservancy opposed. In the end, I think a big new fancy theater would have changed the vibe of the Delacorte, whose modesty is part of its charm, and which echoes the populist spirit of the park. Isn’t that all the more important today, in a city where affordability is a big concern? Absolutely. The Delacorte sustains a vision of a city that dovetails with the one Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux had when they designed Central Park in the middle of the 19th century. It was a place for all New Yorkers. And it remains the single greatest work of stagecraft in the city. The Delacorte and the park remind us of our best self. But they are also reminders of how the park and the city change and evolve. Of course. It happens that this central stretch of the park, which includes the Delacorte and the Great Lawn, is where an aboveground reservoir for the Croton Aqueduct used to be. The reservoir and aqueduct made possible the northward growth of the city. Olmsted and Vaux designed the park around the reservoir, which was deemed obsolete only in 1917, after the city had moved its water system underground. New Yorkers spent a generation debating what to do next with the void where the reservoir had been. There was talk about an arena and an opera house. With the Depression, the area was still a muddy mess and became a shantytown, a Hooverville, before the city finally decided to create the Great Lawn and Turtle Pond. We may think they were there from the beginning, but they’re less than a century old and were still pretty new when Joseph Papp, who founded Shakespeare in the Park, first hauled his flatbed trailer behind a garbage truck into the park to stage “Romeo and Juliet” on what’s now the site of the Delacorte. What about the raccoons and the coyotes? Nature always wins in the end. For all that the new Delacorte accomplishes, it’s never going to keep out the raccoons. But the park doesn’t belong to only us humans. The raccoons have lately been joined by a photogenic pair of coyotes who have been seen sunbathing in the amphitheater. Everyone is now calling them Romeo and Juliet. WEATHER A partly sunny day is ahead with temperatures around 81. As the night falls, so will the temperature, nearing 66. Night conditions will be mostly clear. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Aug. 15 (Feast of the Assumption). The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Trump considers getting involved in the mayor’s race
President Trump has privately discussed whether to get involved in the race for mayor in hopes of blocking Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee. The president has questioned a Republican congressman and New York businessmen about who has the best chance of beating Mamdani. He has spoken by phone with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whom Mamdani beat in the Democratic primary in June. Trump has also been briefed — by the pollster Mark Penn and by Andrew Stein, a former City Council president — on polling data that showed that Cuomo could still be competitive in November. Donors and allies of Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams, who skipped the primary, have been longing to bring the anti-Mamdani vote together behind a single opponent. But it remains far from certain whether Trump will weigh in on the race or how he might do so. METROPOLITAN DIARY Not Lost
Dear Diary: On a trip to New York from our home in Germany years ago, my husband and I were strolling on the Upper East Side. I am not quite sure which museum or other attraction we planned to visit at that time. As we studied a map to figure out which way to go, an older man approached us. “Are you lost?” he asked. The question took us by surprise. “Thank you,” we said. “Do we look lost?” “Oh, no,” he said. “You look happy.” — Ingrid Sandforth-Blanken Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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