Heinz Hall
A 1927 Rapp and Rapp movie palace reborn in 1971 as the Pittsburgh Symphony's concert hall.
The building opened on 10 September 1927 as Loew's Penn Theatre, a 3,800-seat film and vaudeville house by the Chicago firm Rapp and Rapp. Its Venetian-influenced interiors run to a marble grand staircase, a chandeliered grand lobby and heavy gilded plasterwork. Cinema audiences fell away in the 1960s and the theatre was due for demolition, but the Howard Heinz Endowment bought it for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, which had no permanent home of its own.
A conversion costing around $10 million reduced the seating to some 2,670, deepened the stage and reworked the acoustics; the hall reopened as Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts on 10 September 1971, forty-four years to the day after the original opening. A four-storey extension and garden plaza followed in 1982, and further acoustic work in 1995 added a new orchestra shell and sound reflector. The hall anchors Pittsburgh's Cultural District on Penn Avenue.
Highlights
- Marble grand staircase and chandeliered lobby from the 1927 movie palace
- Converted into a concert hall in 1971 and reopened on the original date
- Year-round home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
- Anchors the Cultural District on Penn Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh
