Severance Hall - History

History

Prior to the construction of Severance Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra first performed in the much smaller Grays Armory in downtown Cleveland, and then moved two miles east to the Masonic Auditorium for concerts throughout the 1920s. However, both buildings were used by other groups and for a variety of different kinds of presentations. Most famously, the Orchestra twice had to arrange alternative concert locations from Grays Armory on short notice due to a scheduling conflict with a poultry exhibition. The Orchestra's administration came to recognize the advantages that having its own hall could bring to the ensemble's performances through consistent availability of such a hall for rehearsals, radio broadcasts, and other musical purposes.

After much encouragement from the orchestra's founder Adella Prentiss Hughes and its then Music Director Nikolai Sokoloff, plans for Severance Hall materialized using land offered from Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) at $1 per year and funds from public fundraising and local philanthropists. The conceiver and biggest funder of the project was industrial magnate and philanthropist John Long Severance, who donated $1 million towards development and named the hall after his recently deceased wife Elisabeth Dewitt Severance. Despite the economic difficulties of the Great Depression, construction began in 1929 and finished in 1931.

Designed by local firm Walker and Weeks, the building's exterior is transitional between Classical, and the late flowering of Classical style known as Art Moderne or Art Deco. New York sculptor Henry Hering created an art-deco sculpture for the pediment. Inside, Severance Hall is one of America's greatest Art Deco interiors. As was usual with the style, Egyptian Revival mix with inspiration drawn from Greek and Roman themes. The ceiling and pillars of the auditorium glisten with Art Deco motifs in aluminum leaf, the new material that was the darling of Art Deco designers.