Walt Disney Concert Hall: Sixteen Years From Gift to Opening Night

Lillian Disney donated fifty million dollars in nineteen eighty-seven for a new concert hall in downtown Los Angeles to be named after her late husband. The city added money. Frank Gehry was hired. What followed was sixteen years of design revisions, cost overruns, and a political struggle over who controlled the project. The total cost by opening in October two thousand three was approximately two hundred seventy-four million dollars.

The exterior is composed of free-form stainless-steel panels, each one individually curved, suggesting an enormous ship under construction. After opening, residents of adjacent buildings complained that the polished panels were focusing reflected sunlight into their apartments and raising indoor temperatures. A section of the exterior was subsequently matte-finished to reduce the effect.

The acoustic interior was designed by Yasuhisa Toyota and is considered among the finest in the world for orchestral music. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, which moved in as the resident company, has consistently rated the hall's acoustics as superior to its previous home.

The Concert Hall is twelve blocks from the Bradbury Building, which was completed in eighteen ninety-three. Both are the result of private money, unconventional design decisions, and a single patron who wanted something that had not existed before.