The $20,000,000 Mistake

By Robert Sekuler

The New York Philharmonic Orchestra got a new permanent home when Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts was constructed in the 1960's. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of some of the world's foremost authorities, the orchestra, its conductor, as well as audiences found the hall's acoustics unsatisfactory: the orchestra sounded dry and lifeless, its bass sounds were weak, and echoes at some seat locations caused a single note to sound like two notes. Worst of all, musicians in the orchestra could not hear what they were playing --or what their neighbors were playing.

Between the hall's opening in the early 1960's and the end of 1974, there were five separate attempts to solve these problems. Finally, Columbia University's Cyril Harris, an acoustics expert, ordered that the hall be gutted and rebuilt, virtually from scratch. It took tens of millions of dollars to redo a concert hall.

The original design for Philharmonic Hall was plagued with flaws. Despite the involvement of the world's pre-eminent architects, the hall was an unmitigated disaster. One problem was that the original architect had not raked, or tilted, the floor sufficiently. Because the stage was not terribly high and because the audience seating was relatively flat, sounds created on the stage tended to be absorbed by the bodies and clothing of people in the first few rows, leaving little residual sound for the ears of people who sat further back (in the cheaper --and quieter-- seats).

There's one straightforward, but difficult solution for concert halls that tended to absorb too much sound: keep them as empty as possible. I guess you have to let an audience in, but try to let in as little else as possible. Incidentally, one problem with the original design of the hall was the failure to include enough, convenient coat rooms. As a result of this omission, during cool or inclement weather nearly every concert goer carried his or her coat into the hall, instead of checking the coat outside the hall. Can you figure out what impact these coats would have on the acoustical properties of the hall?

the hall?

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