BALADHAY, NICKY PATRICK D.

BUILDING UTILITIES III

BSARCH III TTH 1:00 - 2:30

“SYMPHONY HALL, BOSTON”

BACKGROUND

Symphony Hall is a concert hall located at 301

Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts.
Designed by McKim, Mead and White, it was built in
1900 for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which
continues to make the hall its home. The hall was
designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1999
and is a pending Boston Landmark. It was then noted
that "Symphony Hall remains, acoustically, among
the top three concert halls in the world ... and is
considered the finest in the United States." Symphony
Hall, located one block from Berklee College of Music
to the north and one block from the New England
Conservatory to the south, also serves as home to the
Boston Pops Orchestra as well as the site of many
concerts of the Handel and Haydn Society.

HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURE

On June 12, 1899, ground was broken and

construction began on Symphony Hall after the
Orchestra's original home (the Old Boston Music Hall)
was threatened by road-building and subway
construction. The building was completed 17 months
later at a cost of $771,000. The hall was inaugurated
on October 15, 1900, Architects McKim, Mead and
White engaged Wallace Clement Sabine, a young
assistant professor of physics at Harvard 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.
The hall is modeled on the second Gewandhaus
concert hall in Leipzig, which was later destroyed in
World War II. The Hall is relatively long, narrow, and high,
in a rectangular "shoebox" shape like Amsterdam's
Concertgebouw and Vienna's Musikverein. It is 18.6m
high, 22.9m wide, and 38.1m 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. Conductor Herbert von Karajan, in
comparing it to the Musikverein, stated that "for much
music, it is even better... because of its slightly lower
reverberation time."

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 and the back channeling on the original maple top boards was replicated
as well.

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 original ones 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.
 ACOUSTICS OF THE SYMPHONY HALL

STATUES

Boston Symphony Hall consist of 16 Greek God statues. These statues are placed in these
specific places to keep the sound flowing through the hall. The statues are there so the
sound does not get trapped in those specific areas.

CEILING

The coffered ceiling of the Boston Symphony Hall doesn’t absorb sound but bounce it
back towards the audience.

ORGAN

The Aeolian-Skinner organ, Opus 1134, is one of Symphony Hall's most famous features.
This is where the sound of the orchestra comes from. The sound flows through the organs
and within the whole hall.

BALCONY

The balconies are narrow so that the sound will not get absorbed and so that it can travel.

MATERIALS

The Symphony Hall is made from brick, steel, and plaster, and has wooden floors. These
materials are used for a reason. Lighter materials are used to build concert halls because
heavier materials like metal and steel absorb sound more than lighter materials.

SHAPE

The Boston Symphony Hall is long and narrow, sort of like a shoebox. This shoe-box design
is popular for halls in Europe and is proven to sound better than any other design.

SOURCES:
 https://prezi.com/kzz6kdhrrafu/acoustics-of-boston-symphony-hall/
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_Hall,_Boston#History_and_architecture
 https://thelasttrombone.com/2019/03/11/symphony-hall-bostons-proud-temple-of-music-
since-1900/