Cincinnati Music Hall

Cincinnati Music Hall
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
Cincinnati Music Hall
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Location	1241 Elm Street Cincinnati, Ohio
Coordinates	39°6′34″N 84°31′8″W / 39.10944°N 84.51889°W / 39.10944; -84.51889Coordinates: 39°6′34″N 84°31′8″W / 39.10944°N 84.51889°W / 39.10944; -84.51889
Built	1878
Architect	Hannaford, Samuel, & Sons
Architectural style	Venetian Gothic
MPS	Hannaford, Samuel, & Sons TR
NRHP reference #	70000496[1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	January 26, 1970
Designated NHL	December 2, 1974

Music Hall, commonly known as Cincinnati Music Hall, is a classical music performance hall in Cincinnati, Ohio, completed in 1878. It serves as the home for the Cincinnati Ballet, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Opera, May Festival Chorus, and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. In January 1975, it was recognized as a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior for its distinctive Venetian Gothic architecture. The building was designed with a dual purpose – to house musical activities in its central auditorium and industrial exhibitions in its side wings. It is located at 1241 Elm Street, across from the historic Washington Park in Over-the-Rhine, minutes from the center of the downtown area.

A view of Music Hall from Washington Park in Cincinnati, Ohio

Music Hall was built over a pauper's cemetery, which has helped fuel its reputation as one of the most haunted places in America.^[2]

In June 2014, Music Hall was included on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's annual list of America's 11 most endangered historic places.^[3]

Venues[edit]

Springer Auditorium

• Springer Auditorium is the main auditorium, named in honor of founding patron Reuben Springer. It has 2,550 seats and ranks acoustically as one of the finest performance venues in the world.^{[citation needed]} It serves as home for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati POPS Orchestra, the Cincinnati Opera and the May Festival Chorus. It is one of the largest permanent concert halls in the U.S, fourth only to the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, and DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

Detail of the auditorium crystal chandelier

• Music Hall Ballroom – accommodating up to 1,300 people, is the second largest meeting space in the city, encompassing nearly 20,000 square feet (1,900 m²). It is frequently used for large receptions, exhibitions, fashion shows, class reunions and breakfast, lunch and dinner gatherings. In October 1998, a $1.8 million renovation of the Ballroom was completed. In July 2007, organ rebuilder Ronald F. Wehmeier of Cincinnati announced the Mighty Wurlitzer theater organ that once graced the old Albee Theater in Cincinnati would be restored and installed in Music Hall's Ballroom for a New Year's Eve 2009 debut.^[4][5]
• Corbett Tower – the setting for a wide variety of events, ranging from weddings and receptions to grand dinners and parties. It has seating for up to 200 and includes a stage, controlled sound and light systems, dance floor, kitchen, and bar facilities. Corbett Tower is located on the third floor near the front of the building..
• Wilks Studio – A new multi-use space that can serve as a rehearsal room or event space for weddings, receptions, fundraisers, meetings, or other gatherings. From the North Concourse on the Balcony Level, enter through the door at the top of the stairs which leads to the Studio Lobby. Seats up to 200.
• Taft Suite – Located at the southwest end of the South Concourse, is a new event space that can be used for receptions, meetings, or other small events. Seats up to 50.

History[edit]

Cemetery[edit]

An 1838 map shows an orphan asylum where Music Hall currently sits.

An 1841 map shows a potter's field where Music Hall currently sits.

On September 13, 1818, the City of Cincinnati purchased from Jesse Embree for $3,200 a plot of land on the west side of Elm Street, just north of 12th Street.^[6] On January 22, 1821, the Ohio State Legislature passed an act that established "a Commercial Hospital and Lunatic Asylum for the state of Ohio."^[7] Thus, Ohio's first insane asylum was erected in Cincinnati on 4 acres (16,000 m²) of land bounded by the Miami and Erie Canal.^[7][8] The Commercial Hospital and Lunatic Asylum of Ohio was the parent institution for the Orphan Asylum, the City Infirmary, the Cincinnati Hospital, and Longview Asylum.^[7] Cincinnati Hospital, the main facility, was located along the canal at 12th and Plum Streets,^[9] which is now 12th and Central Parkway.

Around 1832, a cholera outbreak in Cincinnati killed 832 people and resulted in a large number of orphans.^[10] To house the orphans, the city constructed the "Cincinnati Orphan Asylum" near the corner of 12th and Elm Streets.^[9][10] The Orphan Asylum was a four-story building, 64 feet (20 m) by 54 feet (16 m), which stood for 30 years however, in 1837, it became known as "the Pest House" after the hospital began using it to isolate patients with infectious diseases,^[8] and the ground around the building became used as a Potter's Field.^[2][6] Here the hospital buried suicides, strangers, and the indigent and homeless of Cincinnati.^[2][6][11] It was once believed that instead of coffins, the deceased were merely bundled-up and dropped into the ground, further research, however, has evidenced that they were at one time buried in coffins, however the poor quality wood used quickly decayed leaving little trace of these coffins today.^[2] At the time, this land was still considered the outskirts of the city.^[12]

For the next 20 years, the land was used as a "pauper's cemetery" ^[13] until 1857 when city encroachment on the neighborhood made it unsuitable for such uses. Serious complaints from abutting property owners forced the "Pest House" to be relocated outside of the city limits. On January 29, 1859, the city converted the property into a park known as Elm Street Park and the land and buildings were used for exposition purposes until 1876 when it was turned over to the Music Hall Association.^[6] Music Hall would be built on the original location of the "Pest House" which earlier served as the Orphan Asylum.^[8] Since the graves were not marked, Music Hall was simply built over them.

While digging a new elevator shaft in 1988, human bones were exhumed.^[14] On the first day workers discovered 88 pounds of bones, and on the following day 119 pounds of bones. There were a total of 19 skulls, at least 60 femurs, and while most of the remains were of adults there were also children.^[15] Also while renovating the Music Hall, they found human bones beneath the orchestra pit in 2016. Some say that they would come across 4-6 bodies in a singular coffin.

In 2017, a 16-month, $143-million renovation of Music Hall was completed, a project that reduced the seating capacity of Springer Auditorium from 3,417 to 2,263-2,2524, depending on the configuration.^[16]

Choir festivals and expositions[edit]

Cincinnati's first industrial exposition, which was in 1869, was a great success so the city wanted to expand it the following year.^[17] At the same time, German musicians had plans to erect "a great temporary building opposite Washington Park" for the North American Saengerbund, which Cincinnati was to host during the summer of 1870. The two competing groups reached an agreement to construct a building that would be shared.^[18] Depending on its use, the building was sometimes called Exposition Hall or Saengerfest Hall.

Exposition Hall[edit]

Exposition Hall was a huge wooden structure measuring 250 feet (76 m) long, 100 feet (30 m) wide, and 80 feet (24 m) tall.^[18] Additionally, there were three other temporary buildings attached to it for a total floor space of 108,748 sq ft (10,103.0 m²)—more than that of the 1853 World's Fair in New York City.^[18] The roof of the building was covered in tin. According to lore, a thunderstorm arose during an 1875 May Festival performance.^[12] Rain on the tin roof grew so loud that the chorus was drowned out and the performance had to cease.^[12] In the audience during that performance was Reuben R. Springer (1800–1884),^[19] a wealthy Cincinnatian of German ancestry, who afterwards decided Cincinnati needed a more permanent structure.^[12]

Construction[edit]

The original design of Music Hall.

Detail of structure's music-themed ornamentation.

Springer, influenced by the beneficial results the industrial expositions and musical festivals had on the city, wrote a letter in May 1875 to John Shillito, owner of Shillito's department store, offering to donate $125,000 under two conditions.^[20] First, that the site be free from taxation, and second, that a further sum of $125,000 be raised by the community.^[20][21] When only $106,000 was raised Springer donated an additional $20,000. From the outset, the musical and industrial interests collided, so Springer offered an additional $50,000 if $100,000 could be raised. This additional sum of money would be used for the construction of buildings around the hall for the purpose of holding industrial expositions. The total cost of Music Hall was $300,962.78 with the exposition wings an additional $146,331.51.^[20]

During excavation for Music Hall's foundation there was a lack of police presence as bones were exhumed. Journalist Lafcadio Hearn complained,

The crowds gather thickly about the excavation, and watch each new discovery with ghoulish interest. Bone after bone as soon as thrown out is turned over with a scientific application of kicks; ragamuffins brandish femora with disgusting exultation; dirty fingers are poked into empty eye sockets; jaw-bones are experimentally hammered with heavy canes; ribs crack in pitiful remonstrance to reckless feet; and tobacco juice is carelessly squirted among the decaying skulls. ... When driven away from one spot they return to another; and by night there come medical students to steal the poor skulls.^[22]

According to Hearn, the bones were not treated respectfully by the workers either. He noted,

"bones were simply packed into a barrel and stowed away in a convenient part of the building. ... Skulls and thigh bones and vertebrae had been hopelessly jumbled up in that barrel, so that no one save a most expert articulator could have sorted them out properly."

The excavated remains were transferred to Spring Grove Cemetery.^[23]

Completion[edit]

Ohio Militia with Gatling Guns outside of Music Hall, following riots in 1884.

The first performance took place on May 14, 1878. An estimated 6,000 saw the opera "Alceste" by Christoph Willibald Gluck performed, as well as Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony.^[24] Music Hall also hosted the 1880 Democratic National Convention. The Cincinnati Riots of 1884, one of the most destructive riots in American history, began at a protest meeting at Music Hall. The protest escalated and 10,000 Cincinnatians marched on the courthouse, outraged over what they believed was a lax and corrupt legal system. A total of 56 people died in the violence.^[25]

Paranormal[edit]

This section may present fringe theories, without giving appropriate weight to the mainstream view, and explaining the responses to the fringe theories. Please help improve it or discuss the issue on the talk page. (September 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Various employees of Music Hall have described experiencing strange events in the facility, while others say they've never experienced anything at all. In the 2005 documentary Music Hall: Cincinnati Finds Its Voice, Patricia K. Beggs, the CEO of the Cincinnati Opera, acknowledged, "Ghosts? Um, yes. Indeed, there are Music Hall ghosts." Erich Kunzel, late conductor for the Cincinnati Pops, once stated, "Sometimes when I was arranging, getting things together, I've worked here all night long. So I've met these people. They're not in the offices, but when you go out into the house they're there, they're upstairs. ... If you think I'm crazy just come here sometime at three o'clock in the morning. They're very friendly."^[12]

Ghosts were first reported before Music Hall was built, after the ground was first excavated for an Exposition Hall elevator.^[22] An 1876 newspaper reported,

It does not appear that the ghosts troubled anybody until after a large number of the yellow bones for which they hold a certain spectral affection, had been dug up in making way for the erection of an elevator in Exposition Hall. ... From that hour shadowy people wandered restlessly through the creaking halls by night, hiding in dark corners, stealing behind pillars, and creating queer crepitating noises under the dim roof. The night watchman in charge of the building was greatly annoyed by these mysterious sounds. Whithersoever he went within the edifice by night, the sound of stealthy footsteps followed him; when he stopped they ceased, when he moved again they also followed,—timid feet, invisible, intangible, tireless; and the loose plank that uttered a hollow groan under the watchman's foot, never failed to respond with a gentler moan to the ghostly tread behind. There were strange knockings, too, at all hours of the night—knockings seemingly for admission. But when the door was unbarred and opened, none stood without in the night shadow, nor did the snow in the winter midnights show the print of feet. Sometimes sounds of mocking laughter broke the silence; sometimes strange whispers, faint and thin as whispers falling on the drowsy ears of dying men in the sick rooms; sometimes loud echoes, as of heavy bodies falling in the darkness from the roof to the hollow flooring above the ancient place of graves. Yet no one who ran, lantern in hand, to the place of these inexplicable sounds ever discovered their origin. Dogs brought into the building whined to be let out, and followed their masters with ever sign of abject terror—eye balls wildly protruding, and ears laid back.^[22]

The 1876 article described another alleged incident,

One morning, a certain exhibitor beheld a lady standing before his booth—a lady so strange of aspect that he involuntarily regarded her with peculiar curiosity. She seemed tall and fair and young, clad in a pale dress of fashion long-forgotten, and wearing her hair flowing loose, uncovered by hat or bonnet. He approached the white figure, prompted by a desire to catch a glimpse of the features bent over the case, but ready to mask this purpose by politely placing his knowledge of the wares at the stranger's service. But as he stepped forward, the figure became diaphanous, faint, serial, finally invisible, and a chill as of December winds passed over him.^[22]

On President's Day 2003, a box office worker who was alone at Music Hall described several unusual events. He was isolated in the box office, and could not see into the lobby but heard strange noises all day. He heard music stands in the lobby falling over, but found the stands still upright when he checked. A button to alert him that a customer was at his window rang several times, but no one was there. (It had snowed the night before but there were no footprints in the snow outside the window.) A while later, he heard what sounded like the crystal chandelier in the lobby crashing to the floor and shattering. When he investigated the chandelier was still hanging from the ceiling and all seemed well. He heard the sound of the glass doors in the lobby, which lead to the staircases, opening and closing all day long, but he was the only person in the building. Finally, when he could not put it off any longer, he walked down to the restroom near the Critic's Club. As he neared, he heard "what sounded like, a party going on inside the Critic's Club. Glasses tinkling, muffled voices, laughter and what sounded like a string quartet, except the Critic's Club was locked and the lights were out. I rattled the door and the sound stopped."^[26]

Another box office worker also reported hearing his call button, but seeing no one there. Afterward, he felt a tug on his clothing and turned around to see an apparition of a boy in nineteenth century clothing.^[12] A nightwatchman described hearing footsteps following him on a nearby hardwood floor, but he was walking on carpet and not making any sound.^[26] Roger Krebs, a member of the maintenance crew, states he heard a piano playing on several occasions only to find the hall empty, seen closed doors suddenly open, and witnessed a floor buffer mysteriously turning itself on and off in the ballroom.^[27] Kitty Love, who worked at Music Hall for 21 years acknowledged, "I hear them when I'm on duty alone at night. Footsteps, doors slamming, and music playing, and I know I was the only one in the building."^[2]

Other alleged sightings include ghosts in vintage clothing in the ballroom late at night, an extra, unknown "cast member" appearing during an operatic production, unusual looking figures appearing among the audience, the untraceable sound of a music box playing near an elevator, and a small boy asking about a man in the audience of Springer Auditorium when only himself and his father were present.^[2][12][27]

Neither Marie Gallagher, who worked at Music Hall for 25 years, nor Ed Vignale, facilities engineer, have experienced anything unusual at Music Hall. Viganle noted that some strange sounds could be attributed to Music Hall's acoustical ability to project sounds.^[2]

Music Hall was selected as one of The Travel Channel's Most Terrifying Places in America.

See also[edit]

• List of concert halls
• List of opera houses
• List of reportedly haunted locations in the United States

References[edit]

Notes

Sources

• Greve, Charles Theodore (1904), Centennial history of Cincinnati and representative citizens, Biographical Publishing Company.
• Grauer, Anne L. (1995), Bodies of Evidence, John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 0-471-04279-X

External links[edit]

• Official Music Hall Web Page
• Music Hall 1879-1882-2009
• Society for the Preservation of Music Hall
• 4 interactive full screen 360 degree panoramas of Music Hall