Walt Disney Concert Hall
The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles, California is the fourth hall of the Los Angeles Music Center. The Frank Gehry designed concert hall seats 2,265 people and serves as the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. The walls and ceiling of the hall are finished with Douglas-fir while the floor is finished with oak. Frank Gehry is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles. Both the architecture by Frank Gehry and the acoustics of the concert hall designed by Yasuhisa Toyota were praised in contrast to its predecessor, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The Hall’s reverberation time is approximately 2.2 seconds unoccupied and 2.0 seconds occupied.
Lillian Disney made an initial gift in 1987 to build a performance venue as a gift to the people of Los Angeles and a tribute to Walt Disney‘s devotion to the arts and to the city. Upon completion in 2003, the project cost an estimated $274 million; the parking garage alone cost $110 million. The remainder of the total cost was paid by private donations, of which the Disney family’s contribution was estimated to $84.5 million with another $25 million from The Walt Disney Company. By comparison, the three existing halls of the Music Center cost $35 million in the 1960s (about $190 million in today’s dollars).