Hell’s Kitchen Building Where Kevin Bacon and Other Stars Once Acted Sold for Apartments

On the surface, it looks like a typical Midtown real estate sale — 359 W48th Street (between 8/9th Avenue), a seven-story building most recently used as an employee dorm for the Bank of China, has been sold for $12.5 million to developers King Capital Associates, who plan to convert the site into market-rate housing .

But is a Hell’s Kitchen building ever really just a building? As is often the case, there’s more behind the walls: 359 W48th Street’s unassuming structure belies its previous lives as a church and a vaunted theater that’s only one degree from Kevin Bacon.

Built in 1873 by architects D&J Jardine, 359 W48th spent its first years as various houses of worship, including the Faith Chapel from 1896-1941 and the St Nicholas Albanian Orthodox Church from 1941-1970 ( Wikimapia , Crain’s New York Business ). When the St Nicholas congregation moved to a new space in Jamaica, Queens, the building was refit to become the 499-seat Playhouse Theater, which was known for productions of shows ranging from classic ( A Doll’s House , 1971) to obscure ( Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope , 1972) ( Broadway World ).

Enter: Kevin Bacon. By the early 1980s, the young actor — post- Animal House and pre- Footloose — was already a veteran of the New York theater scene, having attended the Circle in the Square theater school and worked to critical acclaim and an Obie Award for his portrayal of a sex worker in the stage play Forty Deuce (later adapted into a film where Bacon would reprise his role). In 1983, Bacon made his Broadway debut in the company of fellow performers Sean Penn and Val Kilmer in John Byrne’s Slab Boys , the first in a trilogy of stories detailing the lives of Scottish carpet designers.

Slab Boys was a “great experience,” said Bacon in a GQ interview retrospective on his lengthy career. “I’d done a whole shit-ton of theater — that’s really where my heart was,” he added.  “I was working with Sean Penn and Val Kilmer and Jackie Earle Healy and Brian Benben. We were doing this Scottish play, and on this one wacky weekend, I had to do this Footloose audition screen test…”

Footloose would go on to change the trajectory of Bacon’s career — but it’s perhaps less well-known that he was just one of many already established or soon-to-be established actors who tread the boards at the Playhouse (also known as the Jack Lawrence Theater after it was sold in 1983). Everyone from Bacon, Penn and Kilmer to the likes of Christopher Walken (who won an Obie for his role in 1970’s Lemon Sky ); James Earl Jones and Maria Tucci (co-starring in 1980s A Lesson in Aloes ); Orange is the New Black’s Lori Tan Chinn (in 1979’s GR Point ); Stockard Channing, Jeff Daniels and Irene Worth (in 1984’s The Golden Age ), Tom Wopat (in 1978’s A Bistro Car on the CNR ) to John Lithgow played the venue during its heyday. Lithgow, who performed in 1976’s Secret Service , is listed alongside a performer named Arthur Miller, though he appears to be a different artist than the legendary playwright .

In 1987, the curtain came down, when owner Jack Lawrence sold the theater to commercial developer Alan Sackman. ”My competition became the Minetta Lane and the Promenade,” Lawrence told the New York Times of his decision to sell, noting he was never able to obtain the same union concessions as other similarly-sized venues. ”I struggled for years.”

Sackman transformed the performance space into a multifamily residence, managing to retain some of the building’s original design elements from its days as a church. In 1992, Sackman sold the site for $3.3 million to the Bank of China, the state-run financial institution whose Midtown headquarters was then located at 410 Madison Avenue and which still maintains several active branches in New York .

According to Crain’s , the building was used as housing for workers at the bank, though inquiries for further detail were not returned. Jeffrey Znaty of developers Kings Capital told the publication that the bank had gutted the building prior to the pandemic but had not completed any further renovations. The team at Kings Capital previously renovated the nearby 356 W48th Street into units ranging between approximately $4,000 and $6,300 a month.

While those who move into 359 W48th may face similarly steep potential rents, they will, at least, get to revel in their new home’s starry origins. As other Hell’s Kitchen hidden real estate gems have revealed — whether it’s Dustin Hoffman’s time at St Clements , Meryl Streep’s tenure at the late Cubicolo Theater or Bruce Willis’s career as a bartender on 10th Avenue , there’s always a bit more history behind the walls of a humble Hell’s Kitchen building.

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