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  JH Location within Downtown Houston | |
| Address | 615 Louisiana St Houston,TX 77002-2715 |
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| Location | Downtown Houston |
| Coordinates | 29°45′39″N95°21′54″W / 29.760876°N 95.364994°W /29.760876; -95.364994 |
| Owner | City of Houston (operated by the Houston First Corporation) |
| Capacity | 2,912 |
| Construction | |
| Opened | October 2, 1966 (1966-10-02) |
| Renovated | 2003 |
| Construction cost | $7.4 million ($76.9 million in 2024 dollars[1]) $24 million(2003 renovations) ($42.6 million in 2024 dollars[1]) |
| Architect | William Wayne Caudill |
| Website | |
| Venue Info | |
TheJesse H. Jones Hall for the Performing Arts (commonly known asJones Hall) is a performance venue inHouston,Texas, and the permanent home of theHouston Symphony Orchestra and Society for the Performing Arts.[2] Jones Hall is also frequently rented as a venue for contemporary pop musicians and other performers and is estimated to draw over 400,000 audience members yearly.
Officially completed on October 2, 1966, at the cost of $7.4 million, it is named afterJesse H. Jones, a formerUnited States Secretary of Commerce and Houstonian.[3] (For the Hall's opening concert a special work was commissioned of the American composerAlan Hovhaness entitled 'Ode to the Temple of Sound').[4] Construction of the hall was underwritten by Houston Endowment, Inc., a foundation endowed by Jones and his wife Mary Gibbs Jones.[5] Upon completion, the hall was donated to the city,[3] and today is operated by the Houston First Corporation.[6]
Designed by the Houston-based architectural firmCaudill Rowlett Scott, the hall, which occupies an entire city block, features a white Italian marble exterior with eight-story tall columns. The interior includes a basement and a sub-basement which houses a rehearsal room. The lobby is dominated by a 60-foot (18 m) high ceiling featuring a massive hanging bronze sculpture byRichard Lippold entitled "Gemini II". The inside of the concert hall itself is unique in that the ceiling is made of 800 hexagonal segments which can be raised or lowered to change the acoustics of the hall.[3] The segments can actually be lowered enough to close the upper balcony, so theseating capacity therefore fluctuates from about 2,300 with the balcony covered to 2,911 with the balcony open. The building won the 1967American Institute of Architects' Honor Award, which is bestowed on only one building annually.
The acoustics were designed by the firmBolt, Beranek and Newman, who also designedNew York City'sAvery Fisher Hall andSan Francisco'sLouise M. Davies Symphony Hall. However, the only renovations since the hall's construction have been unrelated. In 1993, it was renovated to bring it in accordance with theAmericans with Disabilities Act. From 2001-2003, a $28 million renovation took place to reaffix marble panels which had begun to fall from the building's exterior façade, to renovate parts of the building that had been flooded during 2001'sTropical Storm Allison, and to remove asbestos from the interior.[7]
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