Carnegie Hall

• 1. Introduction

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  Carnegie Hall sits at 881 Seventh Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, two blocks south of Central Park, and on the night of the 5th of May 1891, it opened to the public with a performance conducted by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky himself. The Russian composer called the auditorium "unusually impressive and grand" when "illuminated and filled with an audience". The New York Herald praised the hall's acoustic qualities, noting that "each note was heard". What made this building worth building in the first place? Who saved it when the wrecking ball seemed inevitable? And how did a venue designed for oratorios end up hosting Benny Goodman, The Beatles, and the world premiere of Antonin Dvorak's ninth symphony? Those answers stretch across more than a century of American cultural life.

• 2. A Dream Deferred and Built

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  Leopold Damrosch first imagined what would become Carnegie Hall. As conductor of both the Oratorio Society of New York and the New York Symphony Society, he had watched his performers squeeze into inadequate spaces since the Oratorio Society was founded in 1873. Leopold died in 1885 before his vision could be realized, but his son Walter Johannes Damrosch carried it forward. While studying music in Germany in 1887, the younger Damrosch was introduced to industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who sat on the boards of both societies. Carnegie was initially resistant to funding a Manhattan music hall, but discussions with Damrosch changed his mind; he ultimately agreed to contribute $2 million to the project.

  In early March 1889, Morris Reno, director of the two societies, acquired nine lots at the southeast corner of Seventh Avenue and 57th Street. The Music Hall Company was formally incorporated on the 27th of March 1889, with Carnegie, Damrosch, Reno, and architect William Tuthill among its trustees. Carnegie eventually held five-sixths of the company's capital stock. The New York Times was mildly skeptical of the location, remarking that it was "perhaps rather far uptown" but acknowledged it was accessible from the livelier parts of the city. At the time, most of New York's performance halls were clustered around 14th Street, near Union Square and Herald Square, and 57th Street remained largely residential.

  Carnegie's wife Louise laid the cornerstone on the 13th of May 1890. Her husband declared the venue should be not only "a shrine of the goddess of music" but also a public gathering hall. The Real Estate Record and Guide praised the building's design as "harmonious, animated without restlessness, and quiet without dullness." The building cost $1.25 million to construct and opened as the second major performance hall in New York City, after the Metropolitan Opera House.

• 3. Architecture and Acoustics

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  William Tuthill was thirty-four years old and relatively unknown when he received the commission to design the Music Hall. His selection may have owed as much to his musical sensibilities as to his draftsmanship; he was an amateur cellist and singer. He worked alongside Richard Morris Hunt and Dankmar Adler of Adler and Sullivan. Adler, an experienced designer of music halls and theaters, served as the acoustical consultant. The building was constructed with heavy masonry bearing walls, up to 4 ft thick in places, because lighter structural steel frameworks were not yet in common use. Floor slabs ran 2 ft thick and were made of cement and hollow tiles.

  The complex takes an "L" shape, with three distinct structures each housing one performance space. The main structure, an eight-story rectangular building at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 57th Street, measures 150 ft along the street and 175 ft along the avenue. The facade was built in Roman brick, decorated with terracotta originally produced by the New York Architectural Terra-Cotta Company. A central arcade on 57th Street bears the words "Music Hall Founded by Andrew Carnegie" across its entablature. On opening night, Tuthill reportedly slipped out of the auditorium to consult his drawings mid-performance; he was unsure the supporting columns could bear the weight of the assembled crowd. The dimensions, it turned out, were sufficient.

  The main auditorium, now the Stern Auditorium, rises six stories with 2,790 seats spread across five levels. At the highest point, the top balcony stands 137 steps above the parquet. The lobby ceiling was designed as a barrel vault painted white with gold decorations, and the walls were originally painted salmon with pairs of gray-marble pilasters. Acoustic complaints following a 1980s renovation revealed that a concrete slab had been installed beneath the stage; when it was removed in 1995, critics described an immediate and noticeable improvement in sound.

• 4. Saving the Hall

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  By the late 1920s Carnegie Hall was already showing financial strain. Annual deficits had reached $15,000, and by 1924 the Carnegie Foundation was contemplating a sale. In February 1925, Carnegie's widow sold the hall to real estate developer Robert E. Simon for what the site was then valued at: $2.5 million. Simon agreed to keep the hall running as a performance venue for at least five years as part of the sale agreement.

  The real crisis came in the 1950s. As the New York Philharmonic began planning its move to the new Lincoln Center complex, Simon signaled that without the Philharmonic as an anchor tenant, the hall's future was uncertain. In July 1956, he sold the entire stock of Carnegie Hall, Inc. to a commercial developer, the Glickman Corporation, for $5 million. The Glickman Corporation planned to replace Carnegie Hall with a 44-story skyscraper designed by Pomerance and Breines, which would have had a red facade and stood on stilts. The plan collapsed when Glickman could not secure the $22 million the construction budget required, and delays in Lincoln Center's own schedule gave the hall a reprieve.

  Violinist Isaac Stern became the public face of the preservation effort. He enlisted Jacob M. and Alice Kaplan, along with J. M. Kaplan Fund administrator Raymond S. Rubinow, to help organize a rescue. The effort eventually gained the support of Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr., who formed a taskforce in early 1960. Special legislation was passed that year allowing the city to purchase the site from Simon for $5 million. Simon used the proceeds to develop Reston, Virginia. The city leased the hall to the newly formed Carnegie Hall Corporation, a nonprofit, which paid $183,600 annually for the first fifteen years before shifting to benefit concerts and outreach programs. Carnegie Hall was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962, with the landmark plaque placed on the building after certification in 1964. The main auditorium was renamed after Isaac Stern in 1997, recognizing his pivotal role.

• 5. Performances and Premieres

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  Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, opus 95, "From the New World," had its world premiere at Carnegie Hall on the 16th of December 1893, making it the hall's first major world premiere. By the 1900s the roster of performers working on the stage included Richard Strauss, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Camille Saint-Saens, Alexander Scriabin, Edward Elgar, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. The Boston Symphony Orchestra began performing there regularly after its first concert in 1893, and Leopold Stokowski of the Philadelphia Symphonic Orchestra appeared at the hall across six decades.

  On the 14th of November 1943, a twenty-five-year-old Leonard Bernstein stepped in for a suddenly ill Bruno Walter; the concert was broadcast by CBS and marked Bernstein's major conducting debut. The NBC Symphony Orchestra, under Arturo Toscanini, frequently recorded in the main hall for RCA Victor, and its weekly broadcast concerts were held there until the orchestra disbanded after Toscanini's retirement in April 1954.

  Carnegie Hall was desegregated from the moment it opened, distinguishing it from venues like the National Theatre, which remained segregated well into the 20th century. Sissieretta Jones became the first African-American to sing there on the 15th of June 1892, less than a year after the opening. Popular music arrived early too. In 1912, James Reese Europe's Clef Club Orchestra performed what was described as a "proto-jazz" concert. The Benny Goodman Orchestra gave a sold-out swing concert on the 16th of January 1938, with Count Basie and members of Duke Ellington's orchestra among the guest performers. Judy Garland's multi-Grammy-winning live album "Judy at Carnegie Hall" was recorded at the venue on the 23rd of April 1961.

  Rock and roll arrived on the 6th of May 1955 when Bill Haley and His Comets appeared in a benefit concert. Then, on the 12th of February 1964, The Beatles performed two shows during their first trip to the United States. Promoter Sid Bernstein persuaded Carnegie officials that a Beatles concert would "further international understanding" between the two countries. Led Zeppelin followed with two concerts on the 17th of October 1969. Some performers later had decibel limits written into their contracts, an attempt to discourage rock bookings.

• 6. Three Halls, One Complex

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  Zankel Hall, the smallest of the three performance spaces when measured by its original configuration, carries the most complicated birth story. The space beneath the main building was originally an oratorio hall capable of holding over 1,000 people, with removable seats and a full kitchen service. It opened to the public in April 1891, was later leased to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1896, and eventually became the Carnegie Hall Cinema in May 1961 with a showing of Luchino Visconti's film "White Nights."

  The reconstruction of what became Zankel Hall required excavating 8,000 cubic feet of additional basement space, at some points just 10 ft below the Stern Auditorium's parquet level and as close as 9 ft to the adjacent subway tunnel. Twelve cast-iron columns holding up the main hall had to be removed and replaced with a temporary steel framework. The resulting auditorium seats 599 people across two levels and is enclosed by an elliptical concrete wall measuring 12 inches wide, 114 ft long, and 76 ft wide, sloped at a 7-degree angle and lined with sycamore paneling. JaffeHolden Acoustics handled the soundproofing. Zankel Hall opened in September 2003, delayed from an earlier target by the economic disruptions following the September 11 attacks in 2001. The excavations also pushed the project budget from an initial $50 million to $69 million.

  The Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall, the most intimate of the three spaces with 268 seats, has been in use since the hall opened in 1891. For most of the twentieth century it was called Carnegie Recital Hall, before being renamed in 1986 after Sanford Weill, a former board chairman, and his wife Joan, who together donated $2.5 million. When the Weill Recital Hall reopened in January 1987, its three chandeliers were cited as contributing to the room's acoustics. The stage previously held a plywood proscenium arch and a paneled rear wall, both installed after the hall's completion and both removed in the 1980s specifically to improve the sound.

• 7. Folklore and Famous Jokes

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  A pedestrian on 57th Street, the story goes, once stopped violinist Jascha Heifetz and asked how to get to Carnegie Hall. "Practice!" came the reply. The joke has become inseparable from the building's identity, though Carnegie Hall archivist Gino Francesconi traces its murky origins with care. Although the joke was described as an "ancient wheeze" in 1961, the earliest known printed appearances date only from 1955. Attributions to Jack Benny appear to be mistaken. Francesconi favors a version told by the wife of violinist Mischa Elman, in which Elman makes the quip after leaving the hall's backstage entrance following an unsatisfactory rehearsal. The Washington Post noted that the joke "shows how firmly the building has lodged itself in American folklore."

  The hall's other famous backstage moment is better documented. On the unusually hot day of the 27th of October 1917, Heifetz made his American debut at Carnegie Hall. After Heifetz had been playing for some time, fellow violinist Mischa Elman mopped his brow and asked if it was hot in there. Pianist Leopold Godowsky, sitting beside him, replied: "Not for pianists." That exchange has been confirmed as genuine. A separate story involving violinist Fritz Kreisler and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff, in which Kreisler loses his place during a Beethoven sonata and whispers "For God's sake, Sergei, where am I?" only to be told "In Carnegie Hall" may or may not be apocryphal. The archive holds both kinds of story, the verified and the unverifiable, as part of the same living tradition that brought the building its reputation long before any landmark designation arrived.