Stambaugh Auditorium: A Steel Magnate's Dying Gift
Near Youngstown, Ohio
Henry Stambaugh made his fortune in Youngstown's steel and banking world, tied to Youngstown Sheet and Tube and the First National Bank. When he died, he left one and a half million dollars in his will for a single purpose: a public hall for the entertainment, enjoyment, and education of the city. The result, designed by architect Harvey Wiley Corbett and modeled after Symphony Hall in Springfield, Massachusetts, opened on December fifth, nineteen twenty-six.
The Beaux-Arts building seats two thousand five hundred fifty-three and houses an E. M. Skinner pipe organ that was restored to full playing condition. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen eighty-four, Stambaugh Auditorium remains Youngstown's foremost concert and civic hall, a monument to the era when steel-city industrialists gave their wealth back to the communities their mills had built.
