Benaroya Hall, the downtown home for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, was built on a lot that had 90 years earlier been the site of a design for an earlier concert hall by the prominent Chicago firm of Adler & Sullivan.

The building houses two major concert spaces the main orchestra hall that seats 2500 and the more intimately sized recital hall that seats 550. Extensive acoustic research and analysis was done during the design process to ensure that the sound in this hall would be, as critics have since confirmed, one of the finest sounding concert venues in the world. Part of that effort included eliminating the low rumble of freight trains from a tunnel running diagonally across the site 60′ below ground. The solution required isolating the enormous box of the concert hall on 300 neoprene pads wedged between 6′ deep concrete beams.

A public galleria runs the entire length of the 3rd Avenue façade, with shops and cafes for use by daytime or pre-concert evening visitors. Wrapping around the south and west sides of the building, the Garden of Remembrance, a quiet memorial to Seattle’s war dead, provides a welcome green oasis for downtown office workers and bustling shoppers.

¹Designed while Principal at LMN Architects

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