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There has been a lot of reporting in recent months about the "newly renovated" Henry Miller's Theatre or the "newly restored" Henry Miller's Theatre. Cook+Fox Architects LLP, the outfit that brought the 1918 Broadway theatre in question back to life, wants you to know that there's no such thing.

"There are various words floating around," said Pam Campbell, a senior associate with Cook+Fox. "People have said a 'restored' theatre and a 'reconstructed' theatre, which isn't entirely correct. It's a new theatre."

One can't blame people for being a bit confused when they look at the front of the West 43rd Street venue named for Miller, a once-prominent actor and theatre-manager of the late-19th-century and early-20th-century American theatre. It has the same neo-Georgian façade of the original 1918 theatre. It was kept intact because it had been landmarked by the city. But what lies behind the face, however, is almost entirely new.

"Henry Miller had some pretty strong ideas on what a theatre should be," said Campbell, "so we had all that to go on, which really influenced the new design."

Echoes of Miller's input begin in the unusual, oval-shaped lobby. The modest space mirrors exactly the size and location of the original lobby. The ceiling, with its decorative crown moldings and central frieze of dancing muses, is also original, having been taken down in pieces and then put back, like a jigsaw puzzle, at the appropriate time. The first lobby had only a single box office window, to the left as you walked in. That wouldn't suffice today, so that window now looks on to an additional room where a multiple-windowed box office is now situated. The not-for-profit Roundabout Theatre Company has a long-term lease; its Bye Bye Birdie revival is the current occupant.

"Neo-Georgian was about making everything domestic in scale," said Campbell, explaining Miller's aesthetic, "the idea that we're going going to have this performance in a room and share that together, rather than what he called a 'spectacular.' That style came from the Little Theatre Movement, which Miller really subscribed to."

Accordingly, Cook+Fox tried to keep the theatre as intimate as possible. Seating jumped from only 950 seats, in 1918, to 1,055 seats today. Box seats, while not as popular today as they were a century ago, were included in the theatre's design because, "It really helps draw the eye into the stage," said Campbell. "We felt is was better than flat walls on the sides."

"We wanted to keep this room as compact as possible, going back to the idea that Henry Miller had about it feeling like everyone's in the one room, and everything's focused on the actor. When you stand on the stage, you really can see people in the back row, their faces."

Still, she admitted, the physical space was bigger and slightly deeper than the original Miller. There is a very practical reason for that. "This is a modern building. The theatre that was here wasn't meeting the modern building codes. It was operating under a temporary cabaret license."

The theatre also appears bigger from the street. The new building extends beyond the first theatre's footprint by 22 feet on either side. These sections, which include extended lobby space and stairways, have glass outer walls, making them visible from the outside. Side walls, made of a terra cotta material similar in hue to the brickface on the facade, create a sense a connection between the old and new portions of the frontage.

	The rear of the façade of Henry Miller's Theatre during construction.

"One of the things that was important to us was that the facade didn't seem like this little, stuck-on, brick façade on a big glass building," said Campbell. "This design let us continue the side walls of the façade into the interior to make it feel like a complete box, a complete volume instead of just the façade. So when people approach it from the street, they really see the whole volume of the theatre."

The fact that Bank of America would be doing business just above the theatre was taken into account at every turn. The giant banking house has its cafeteria and its own corporate auditorium on the floor above the theatre, and a trading floor directly above that. "There are two set of columns within these walls," explained Campbell. "One that holds up the building, one that holds up the theatre's auditorium. So there's no transfer of sound or vibrations between the two."

With the bank directly above, Cook+Fox had now choice but to build downward when designing the theatre. The result is one of only two subterranean theatres on Broadway. (The other is Circle in the Square.) When you walk through the theatre doors off the lobby, you enter the very top of the theatre's mezzanine. (The theatre's flytower actually rises up through the first floor of the Bank.)

The look of the first Henry Miller's Theatre is remembered not just through the preservation of the façade, and the honoring of Miller's Little Theatre Movement principles. "We took some sample artifacts, some of the more decorative pieces, and we wanted to preserve them as a sort of note of the past," pointed out Campbell. As you walk out of the lobby, you're confronted by a darkened piece of decorative plaster depicting more dancing ladies. It was part of that frieze that went around the ceiling of the auditorium. Other sections of the frieze are displayed in other areas of the theatre. "We basically cleaned up and stabilized them, but didn't restore them to the original state," said Campbell. "We thought it was far more interesting to show how it had been aged."

At the corners of the proscenium, segments of another frieze remain in place, and, along the walls of the auditorium, the old exit doors, which feature decorative panels in the same Grecian muse theme, hang like artwork. Meanwhile, just inside the stage-door entrance hangs an old neon sign that used to be suspended outside the theatre back in the 1950s. It reads "Henry Miller's Theatre" in bright white bulbs.

While the new structure harkens back to the past in many ways, the building is forward-thinking in others. The architects designed it intending to qualify for a "Green building" certification. Building materials were chosen carefully, and included healthier glues and paints. The air brought in from outside is filtered to a very high degree. The wood used is North American Cherry from a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified forest, and the carpet is made of wool, a "rapidly renewable resource." The grey, stone-like material on the walls is paperstone, which is actually made of highly condensed recyled paper. Washrooms contain waterless urinals; they do not flush, but are cleaned with a spray. In fact, all the water in the building, from the sinks to the showers backstage, goes through a Green water system, in which it is treated and used again.

Also green — not Green, but green — is the wall behind the main bar. "Bright English green," actually, according to stories in 1918 covering the opening of the theatre. "That was the color of the original lounge," said Campbell. "We had to do some research to find out what exactly Bright English Green might look like back then!"