Emery Theatre - Design

Design

Adler’s design helped Harvey Hannaford with the design problems of the Emery Auditorium. Adler used the principle of the "isacoustic curve" first described by John Scott Russell in 1836 not only to calculate the best placement of the Auditorium's main floor and its three balconies, but also to design a series of terraced ellipses that form the ceiling in the front part of the hall. These ellipses helped direct sound evenly throughout the hall. They serve the added function of lessening the overall volume so sound in this large hall is not boomy or cavernous but still resonant, especially for the audience in the second and third balconies.

The final 1911 Emery Auditorium design is derived from the 1909 design. Hannaford made the ellipse shallower, shifted the three coffered ceiling segments toward the stage, and added in the back of the hall a smooth ceiling which is rounded in the front. The ellipse was now the same as Music Hall's ellipse.

The two massive balconies are the most wonderful structural aspects of the 1911 design. Viewed from the stage, the balconies appear to be strung effortlessly between the walls of the hall. Their "secret" lies in two I-beams of structural steel, one for each balcony, over eighty-nine feet long and weighing thirty-three tons each, running the width of the hall. The balconies rest largely on these beams. The beam for the second balcony is tied directly into the back pair of the hall's four main support columns. The anchorage for the lower balcony's beam is less obvious. It appears to float above the main floor because it enters the walls immediately above two sets of exit doors. Actually, it is riveted at both ends into plate girders that span the doors like lintels, and which are in turn attached to the support columns. These plate girders are completely covered over by masonry. An intricate system of cantilever trusses extends out from these I-beams to form the front part of the balconies. This method of balcony construction was relatively new in 1910 and had, to the author's knowledge, never been used in a concert hall in the United States prior to the Emery Auditorium. Its use in two balconies adds further precedent to the Emery's design.

In regard to acoustics, Leopold Stokowski commented on the hall's excellent combination of clarity and blend, and the effective increase in the orchestra's power. Individual instrumental colors could now be heard with greater resolution because of the greater logistical intimacy between audience and orchestra, and because the hall's shape and dimensions created a less diffuse sound, while at the same time creating resonance which blended the clearer, more powerful sound into a well-balanced whole. Unfortunately, we have no record of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s sound in the Emery, as they made no commercial recordings and no radio broadcast transcription disks are known to exist from the period the orchestra performed there.