Part of Lincoln Center, the Vivian Beaumont was conceived as a repertory theater.

The first Broadway theater to be built since 1928 and part of a complex that included the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, and the New York Philharmonic, it was one of the most important cultural commissions in the United States at the time. Eero Saarinen, a Detroit-based architect, was chosen to design the theater and he collaborated with the prominent set designer Jo Mielziner on the interior. Mielziner made the interior of the theater very flexible by designing the auditorium with a stage that could be either a thrust stage that projects into the audience or could convert into a more traditional proscenium stage. For many years, producers found it difficult to program the theater due to this unusual configuration. In 1985, executive producer Bernard Gersten took over the nonprofit space and turned it into a successful membership-based theater presenting such works as The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, The Coast of Utopia, and The Light in the Piazza.