BAM Harvey Theater

The historic Harvey Theater, opened on August 29, 1904, is one of two major performance venues for the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). In need of updates, BAM employed Hunter Roberts to replace the existing seats and reconfigure the existing seating layout and stage platforms in order to improve sight lines, increase audience comfort, and eliminate safety concerns. Due to the reconfiguration of space, the team was also able to build a new HD cinema. Scope for this undertaking included: demolishing seating, concrete, and steel seating risers and platforms; rebuilding the seating platforms with heavy gauge steel, framing risers, and lightweight concrete; removing existing left and right technical boxes, raising the floor heights, and rebuilding the boxes to match their original appearance; removing existing stage and lower seating platforms and installing new ones; furnishing and installing a new projections booth, a 40-foot-wide screen, and acoustical treatments in order to give the theater the capacity to act as an HD cinema; widening the cross aisle to improve access; furnishing and installing new seating at the orchestra level; rebuilding the lobby wall and creating new vestibules and vomitories on either side of the theater in order to reduce noises from patrons entering and exiting as well as to provide a more dramatic entrance for performers; coordinating scenic painting throughout; and installing new carpet in the lobby, stairs, and cross aisle. Hunter Roberts was able to maintain the theater’s original appearance throughout the project.