It has been a tough year for St. Louis. A tornado roared across the city last spring, destroying 5,000 buildings and causing an estimated $1.8 billion in damage. Some residents are still waiting on federal disaster funds from a White House that has balked at providing assistance. And President Trump has threatened to send in the National Guard to patrol this city’s streets.
So the reopening last Friday of Powell Hall, the graceful century-old home of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, after a $140 million renovation and expansion, has become a moment of celebration for a city in need of a lift. The ceremonies this weekend were a reminder of the power of music, city leaders said. They also reinforced St. Louis’s longstanding stature as a vibrant arts center in the Midwest, and the central place of Powell Hall and the orchestra in the city’s identity and reputation.
“It’s been a very, very rough year,” said the mayor, Cara Spencer, who took office in April. The reopening of Powell Hall “is absolutely a bright spot,” she added. “It’s going to really broaden the footprint and the reach of the symphony within our city.”
The evening before the hall opened, the whirl of floor sanders filled the air, as workers in hard hats and orange vests scrambled to put the finishing touches on the 64,000-square-foot, three-story addition that wraps around the 1925 building. (The classic Powell Hall front on North Grand Boulevard remains untouched.)
On opening morning, there were still a few glitches. The smell of paint lingered as patrons streamed in the new entry, designed to invoke the curves of the inside of a violin. A door leading off the stage would not open for a procession of horn players after they performed three orchestral fanfares to mark the moment: for the Common Man, for the Uncommon Woman, and for Universal Hope, a new work.
No matter. The crowd burst into applause as Marie-Hélène Bernard, the chief executive of the symphony, stepped onstage. “Bonjour!” said Bernard, who is from Montreal. “Welcome home. We have made it.”
The symphony’s program that morning included two works commissioned for the occasion — that Universal Hope fanfare by James Lee III (joining the familiar ones by Aaron Copland and Joan Tower) and “House of Tomorrow” by Kevin Puts, who grew up in St. Louis, featuring the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and a large chorus that filled the very big stage. The performance ended with Richard Strauss’s “Ein Heldenleben.”
Powell Hall opened in 1925 as a grand movie palace and vaudeville hall, and it kept showing films until 1968, when the St. Louis Symphony took it over. It was never a comfortable fit. “This was not a hall made for an orchestra,” said Stéphane Denève, the symphony’s music director, who conducted the inaugural concert. “It was a movie theater.”
At intermission, concertgoers had to choose between waiting in line for the restroom or waiting in line to get a flute of champagne. There wasn’t enough time to do both. (Movies rarely have intermission.) The donor lounge, for all its aspirations of exclusivity, was a windowless room in the basement.
It was worse for the musicians. There was no backstage. That meant there were no dedicated lockers or changing rooms. Men would change in the restrooms. The women would dress at home and upon arrival, throw their purses into a locker. There were no rooms for the musicians to warm up or practice. For the brass section that meant commandeering a boiler room in the basement.
That was all forgotten on Friday morning. Donors headed to a new airy lounge on the third floor, with a window offering a view of the Gateway Arch in the distance. There are bathrooms and bars at every turn. And suites of soundproofed practice rooms.
The complex, now called the Jack C. Taylor Music Center, is 125,000 square feet, including Powell Hall and the addition. It has a music education center, and room for two choruses, the youth orchestra and a studio for St. Louis Public Radio to use when broadcasting the Saturday night performances.
The changes in the concert hall itself are less dramatic, preserving the essence of a building that is on the National Register of Historic Places.
“The original building, as many challenges as it has, people loved it,” said Craig Dykers, a founding partner of Snohetta, the Oslo- and New York-based architectural firm that oversaw the renovation and designed the expansion. “Furthermore, the symphony loved it. There were a lot of reasons not to take away what people loved. We made sure that the character of the building — which is very flamboyant — was not taken away.”
The lobby, with wedding-cake chandeliers, is still a riot of gold trim on ivory, in keeping with its original inspiration of the Palace of Versailles.
Inside the hall, there are now 2,150 seats, down from 2,653. Concertgoers will enjoy more leg room and seats that are an inch wider and deeper. “We are fatter and I’m told that we are taller,” said Bernard, who has overseen the renovation from its earliest stages 10 years ago.
Powell Hall has long been praised for the warmth and clarity of its acoustics. For Denève, the top concern was preserving its sound, which he described as “the soul of the hall.”
“That was, for me, the main challenge,” he said, “how to preserve the quality of the acoustics and possibly improve it.”
And while it is often months and even years after a renovation before the acoustics have settled in and are ready for judgment, Denève proclaimed it a success the afternoon before the opening. “Actually I was hoping for even improving it,” he said. “And I think that’s the case.”
Getting to the finish line was not easy. The original plan was to open in January 2025, but the deadline was pushed back in part because of lingering material shortages caused by the pandemic, Bernard said. For two years as the work was being completed, the orchestra hopscotched around the city, playing in other halls and auditoriums. (The New York Phil endured a similarly nomadic period while awaiting the opening of David Geffen Hall).
But at $140 million, the project came in on budget. It was funded with money from private donors and foundations and by grants from the state. (The city charges a hotel tax and distributes some of that money to local arts organizations, including the symphony.)
The project’s success offers a contrast to the city’s distress over the past six months. Mayor Spencer said she spent much of her time in those early days worrying about where people who lost homes in the tornado would sleep when the weather turned cold, and dealing with the Trump White House.
“These are very, very tumultuous times,” she said. “They are scary times. Especially for cities like St. Louis.”
But as concertgoers arrived Friday morning, partaking in the free coffee and doughnuts that Powell Hall has traditionally handed out for its Friday morning shows, taking in the new home for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, it was clear that this was a day for celebration.
“Transformative,” said Anna Forder, a retired circuit judge. “Everybody is really excited.”
For those who remember the last hall, the new era was particularly welcome.
“It was kind of tired,” said Bill Behan, a lumber company executive. “And now it’s just spectacular.”
Adam Nagourney is a Times reporter covering cultural, government and political stories in New York and California.
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