The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra announced today that Powell Hall will undergo a major renovation and expansion, its first since the symphony made the building its home in 1968.
Built in 1925 and originally named the St. Louis Theatre, Powell Hall has been a fixture in Grand Center for decades. The new project, which includes both renovations to the existing structure and a 65,000-square-foot expansion, is focused on accessibility and furthering community connections. While the project itself is still in planning stages, the SLSO hopes to make Powell Hall into a “state-of-the-art music center for the community” while still preserving its historic character.
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“[Powell Hall has] superb architecture, which we plan to preserve,” says SLSO President and CEO Marie-Hélène Bernard. “It has some of the finest acoustics of any concert hall in the country, but like many halls over the years, especially approaching 100 years, there is an aging process. So we need to update. The audience experience has evolved, and the experience of artists has evolved as well.”
Among the proposed projects is the construction of a 3,400-square-foot education and learning center that will act as both a rehearsal space for the symphony’s choruses and youth orchestra and a venue for educational programs and events.
These new spaces will not only provide facilities for more media activities, but also allow the SLSO to ramp up its already robust educational programming for both children and adults, including online resources for distance learning. “Some teachers and students who are not close by cannot come physically here, so for us to be able to distribute sequential music education to them from that center will be very important,” says Bernard.
The new expansion will also feature an accessible lobby with updated amenities, and a backstage space that includes not only lounges, dressing rooms, and practice areas, but also a new music library and media and recording suites. These updated resources will “help ensure that Powell Hall remains a destination for the SLSO’s many celebrated artistic collaborators,” according to a release announcing the plans.
Plans for renovations to the existing spaces will focus on the comfort and accessibility of Powell Hall. The SLSO promises new and improved entrances, noise-reduction projects, ADA-accessibility and additional seating, and a state-of-the-art lighting system, in addition to an auditorium redesign that will reduce the capacity from 2,683 to 2,150 seats by increasing both seat size and leg room. Outside, Powell Hall’s usable spaces will expand beyond its walls with new green spaces surrounding the building.
“We serve a very broad range of audiences, from the very young to the very old. [This project] will also really enable anyone to facilitate their access to the building, but also make it easy for people to enjoy the experience. There’s very little space right now where people can linger,” says Bernard. “The social connections are so important to music and how music can take different forms and shapes. The additional space and the renovated space will allow for interesting explorations that we cannot necessarily do right now.”
The Powell Hall project team is led by architectural firm Snøhetta, with St. Louis-based architect of record Christner Architects, theatre planning consultant Schuler Shook, acoustics design firm Kirkegaard, and and construction management services by BSI Constructors. The project will appear before the city’s Preservation Board at its March 28 meeting.
“We’re in the planning phase, so we are going to be sharing more information as we go, but this project is for our community. We’re making an important investment in our city and our region. Arts and culture is very critical to our community,” says Bernard. “This is a project we do to benefit the community. And we invite the community to continue to enjoy live music and to see this as something we do for all of us to enjoy, where everyone is welcome.”
