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 Front view of Symphony Hall in 2023 | |
 Interactive map of Symphony Hall | |
| Address | 301Massachusetts Avenue |
|---|---|
| Location | Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Coordinates | 42°20′34.2″N71°5′8.5″W / 42.342833°N 71.085694°W /42.342833; -71.085694 |
| Public transit | Symphony,Hynes Convention Center,Massachusetts Avenue |
| Owner | Boston Symphony Orchestra |
| Type | concert hall |
| Capacity | 2,625 |
| Construction | |
| Broke ground | June 12, 1899 |
| Built | 1900 |
| Opened | October 15, 1900 (1900-10-15) |
| Architect | McKim, Mead and White |
| Website | |
| www | |
Symphony Hall | |
| Built | 1900 |
| Architect | McKim, Mead and White |
| Architectural style | Renaissance |
| NRHP reference No. | 99000633[1] |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | January 20, 1999 |
| Designated NHL | January 20, 1999[2] |
Symphony Hall is aconcert hall that is home to theBoston Symphony Orchestra, located at 301Massachusetts Avenue inBoston, Massachusetts, United States. BSO founderHenry Lee Higginson commissioned architectural firmMcKim, Mead and White to create a new, permanent home for the orchestra. Symphony Hall can accommodate an audience of 2,625. The hall was designated a U.S.National Historic Landmark in 1999 and is a pendingBoston Landmark. It was then noted that "Symphony Hall remains, acoustically, among the top three concert halls in the world (sharing this distinction with the AmsterdamConcertgebouw and Vienna'sMusikvereinsaal), and is considered the finest in the United States."[2][3] Symphony Hall, located one block fromBerklee College of Music to the north and one block from theNew England Conservatory to the south, also serves as home to theBoston Pops as well as the site of many concerts of theHandel and Haydn Society.
On June 12, 1899, ground was broken and construction began on Symphony Hall after the Orchestra's original home (the OldBoston Music Hall) was threatened by road-building and subway construction. The building was completed 17 months later at a cost of $771,000.[4] The hall was inaugurated on October 15, 1900, ArchitectsMcKim, Mead and White engagedWallace Clement Sabine, a young assistant professor of physics atHarvard University, as their acoustical consultant, and Symphony Hall became one of the first auditoria designed in accordance with scientifically derived acoustical principles. Admired for its lively acoustics from the time of its opening, the hall is often cited as one of the best sounding classical concert venues in the world.[5]
The hall is modeled on the secondGewandhaus concert hall inLeipzig, which was later destroyed inWorld War II. The Hall is relatively long, narrow, and high, in a rectangular "shoebox" shape likeAmsterdam'sConcertgebouw andVienna'sMusikverein. It is 18.6 metres (61 ft) high, 22.9 metres (75 ft) wide, and 38.1 metres (125 ft) long from the lower back wall to the front of the stage. Stage walls slope inward to help focus the sound. With the exception of its wooden floors, the Hall is built of brick, steel, and plaster, with modest decoration. Side balconies are very shallow to avoid trapping or muffling sound, and the coffered ceiling and statue-filled niches along three sides help provide excellent acoustics to essentially every seat. ConductorHerbert von Karajan, in comparing it to theMusikverein, stated that "for much music, it is even better... because of its slightly lower reverberation time."[6]
In 2006, due to years of wear and tear, the original concert stage floor was replaced at a cost of $250,000. In order to avoid any change to the sound of the hall, the new floor was built using same methods and materials as the original. These included tongue-in-groove, three-quarter inch, hard maple boards, a compressed wool underlayment and hardened steel cut nails, hammered in by hand. The vertical grain fir subfloor from 1899 was in excellent shape and was left in place. The nails used in the new floor were hand cut using the same size and construction as the originals[7] and the back channeling on the original maple top boards was replicated as well.[8]
Beethoven's name is inscribed over the stage, the only musician's name that appears in the hall since the original directors could agree on no other name but his. The hall's leather seats are the originals installed in 1900. The hall seats 2,625 people during Symphony season and 2,371 during the Pops season, including 800 seats at tables on the main floor.
Sixteen casts of notable Greek and Roman statues line the upper level of the hall's walls. Ten are of mythical subjects, and six of historical figures. All were produced byP. P. Caproni and Brother. The casts, as one faces the stage are:
The Symphony Hall organ, a 4,800-pipeAeolian-Skinner (Opus 1134) was designed byG. Donald Harrison, installed in 1949, and autographed byAlbert Schweitzer. It replaced the hall's first organ, built in 1900 by George S. Hutchings of Boston, which was electrically keyed, with 62 ranks of nearly 4,000 pipes set in a chamber 12 feet (3.7 m) deep and 40 feet (12 m) high. The Hutchings organ had fallen out of fashion by the 1940s when lighter, clearer tones became preferred.E. Power Biggs, often a featured organist for the orchestra, lobbied hard for a thinner bass sound and accentuated treble.
The 1949 Aeolian-Skinner reused and modified more than 60% of the existing Hutchings pipes and added 600 new pipes in a Positive division. The original diapason pipes, 32 feet (9.8 m) in length, were reportedly sawed into manageable pieces for disposal in 1948.
In 2003, the organ was thoroughly overhauled by Foley-Baker Inc., reusing its chassis and many pipes, but enclosing the Bombarde and adding to it the long-desired Principal (diapason) pipes, adding a new Solo division, and reworking its chamber for better sound projection. The original 1949 four-manual console was replaced with a low-profile three-manual console, to allow a better line of sight between the organist and the conductor when the organ and orchestra play together.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) Beranek paraphrases but does not quote von Karajan in the second edition of this work (2004).
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