On this date in 1891, Carnegie Hall, one of the world's most renowned concert halls, opened in New York. 10 things you might not know about Carnegie Hall.
The opening event was an orchestral concert, and one of the conductors was Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who conducted five of his own pieces. During his visit he kept a notebook which he called Trip to America, which was found after his death. In it, he listed a number of things he wondered about prior to the trip, such as whether it was safe to drink the water, what kind of hats people wore and whether he could get his laundry done.
The hall is situated 881 Seventh Avenue, between 56th and 57th Streets, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, and has a footprint of 27,618 square feet (2,565.8 m2).
There are three auditoriums with a total of 3,671 seats. 2,790 of these are in the Stern Auditorium which was named after violinist, cultural ambassador, social advocate, and civic leader Isaac Stern. The other two are Zankel Hall, and Weill Recital Hall.
The hall itself is named after steel magnate Andrew Carnegie who stumped up the cash to pay for it. It was designed by American architect William Burnet Tuthill, who’d never designed a concert hall before, but got the job through serving on a board with Carnegie. Tuthill also happened to be an amateur cellist. The style is Renaissance Revival, originally developed in Florence in the 14th century.
When it was first built, it was known as the Music Hall and it was intended to make a profit (it’s a non-profit organisation today). Carnegie’s wife and conductor Walter Damrosch nagged him to build a concert hall to rival those in Europe. The need to make money affected how the building looks today. An original mansard roof was removed in 1894 to make room for studios musicians could rent in order to cover a deficit. It still wasn’t enough so an extra tower was added. This was designed by a different architect, Henry Hardenbergh, because Tuthill had got a bit pissed off that his masterpiece was being tampered with. The beams from the original roof are now a feature of the building’s offices.
The area in which the hall was built was known at the time as Goat Hill, where there was a brewery, which had been built there to take advantage of a natural spring. The brewery was demolished to make way for the hall’s extension. There were fears at the time that it was too far uptown to be a popular venue.
It fell into disrepair in the 1950s and at one point was scheduled to be demolished and a skyscraper built on the site. Civic leaders lobbied the city of New York to buy the venue for $5 million and establish the non-profit Carnegie Hall Corp. to manage it.
Many iconic classical works had their world premieres at Carnegie Hall, including Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 (From the New World); Symphonia Domestica by Richard Strauss, conducted by the composer; Concerto in F by George Gershwin with the composer on piano, and Variations on a Theme of Corelli by Sergei Rachmaninov, also with the composer on piano.
Zankel Hall was an art house cinema for a while and was allegedly showing porn movies in the 1970s.
There’s also a museum called the Rose Museum, which is open to the public, concert schedule’s permitting. People with tickets to events at Stern can also visit the museum in the hour before the concert starts.
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