[icantthinkofone]

As an aside, my web dev company runs about 10 web sites for theatre companies and all of them spell their names ending in 're' while the venues they play at spell their names ending in 'er'.

The first time we signed up one of these companies, I asked about the spelling and was given the same history as outlined in the article. With the second company that signed us, we mis-typed theatre and were taken to the woodshed for making the error.

So we are used to spelling it as theatre in the correct use of the word and are surprised the NY Times has not for many years.