The Helen Hayes Theatre, previously called the Little Theatre, was built in 1912 by Winthrop Ames as a 299-seat venue to avoid a fire department regulation that required a ten-foot alley on either side of auditoriums seating 300 or more.

A wealthy New Englander and Harvard graduate, Ames financed the construction with his inheritance money from Ames Shovel and Tool Company. Ames was interested in the Little Theater Movement and wanted to build an intimate venue where audiences felt like they were sitting in a living room watching a play. Ames, who had studied architecture, contributed to the design and worked closely with two young architects with no theater experience, Harry Creighton Ingalls and F. Burrall Hoffman, who had studied at the École de Beaux-Arts in Paris. Designed to look like a colonial New England house, the theater was adorned with red brick laid in the Flemish bond style, alternating long and short bricks, shutters on the windows, and iron balconies. The interior was designed in the plainer neo-Colonial or Federal style, a departure from most other Broadway theaters that were more formal. In 1920 Herbert J. Krapp redesigned the theater and added a balcony to accommodate additional seating. The theater was renovated again in 1979 and renamed the Helen Hayes in 1983 after the original theater of that name was torn down to make room for the New York Marriott Marquis. Today it is the only independently owned theatre on Broadway and, with only 599 seats, it remains the littlest theater.