Symphony Hall

Symphony Hall has been the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since it opened on 15 October 1900. Henry Lee Higginson, the orchestra’s founder, commissioned it from the New York architects McKim, Mead and White, who took the Gewandhaus in Leipzig as a model. They engaged Wallace Clement Sabine, a young Harvard physicist, as acoustical consultant, and the hall was among the first to be designed on scientific acoustic principles. The shallow side balconies, coffered ceiling and niches filled with casts of classical statues all help to spread the sound, and the hall is regularly ranked with the Musikverein in Vienna and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Beethoven’s is the only composer’s name inscribed in the hall. The London Symphony Orchestra plays there on tour.