Matthews Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center

History

The Ed and Marie Matthews Theatre is the historic main stage of McCarter Theatre Center at 91 University Place in Princeton, built with a gift from Princeton alumnus Thomas N. McCarter as a home for the Triangle Club. It opened February 21, 1930, with the club’s show The Golden Dog. The roughly 1,100-seat proscenium has since premiered Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It with You, and William Inge’s Bus Stop, and it still presents plays, musicals, and concerts. Princeton University owns the building; the nonprofit McCarter Theatre Center has operated it since the 1970s.