Metro

Stolen Tiffany fixture resurfaces in antique shop 40 years later

It’s the miracle on 44th Street!

Forty years after custom-made Tiffany light fixtures were stolen from a landmark Broadway theater on West 44th Street, one has resurfaced — blocks away at an East 57th Street antique store.

But the owners of the Belasco Theatre, the Shubert Organization, have been forced to file a lawsuit to reclaim what they call a “piece of Broadway history” from its current owner.

“The fixture is a unique, historic and irreplaceable antique object,” according to Shubert’s new Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.

Thieves broke into the Belasco on Feb. 28, 1976, and swiped five leaded- and stained-glass Tiffany fixtures.

The theater reported the theft, but the brass-framed fixtures were never recovered.

Then, in June, a Shubert project manager received a call from Arlie Sulka, owner of the antiques gallery Lillian Nassau at 22 E. 57th St.

Vilma Partridge, 88, of Spring Valley, NY, and her daughter Vilma Partridge had consigned the long-missing fixture to the gallery.

Sulka, who specializes in the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, “recognized the fixture as possibly one of the lighting fixtures taken from the Belasco in 1976,” the suit says. Sulka allowed Shubert reps to examine the lamp, and they confirmed the amber-colored, eight-sided lamp belonged to the theater.

But as soon as Sulka told the Partridges about the discovery, they pulled the consignment agreement, the suit says. Sulka then returned the fixture to them.

The Shubert Organization offered Vilma Partridge a settlement for the piece, but she has refused to hand it over, papers state.

Shubert’s general counsel, Gilbert C. Hoover IV, told The Post he has no idea how the Partridges obtained the fixture.

He claims they “never acquired good title” for it because it was the subject of a decades-old theft.

Partridge’s attorney did not return calls for comment.

Shubert is now suing Partridge to get back the antique.

The 109-year-old theater was hailed as “the most beautiful in New York” a year after it opened. It hosted President Obama for a 2009 revival of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” and more recently was home to the Tony Award-winning revival of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”