Slide Show Library

"There was no coming and going of dandies and mouthpieces. All was quiet, dignified, soft, slow and noiseless, as became the dedicaction of a great temple of music." So said The New York Herald of the opening night of the new Music Hall at the corner of 57th Street and Seventh Avenue on May 5, 1891. It was the first night of a five night festival celebrating the inauguration of New York City's newest and finest music hall. The concerts, which featured two giants of the composing and conducting worlds—Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Walter Damrosch—attracted the great and good of late nineteenth century New York society—John D. Rockefeller, Isaac Newton Seligman, and William J. Sloane among them—and with The New York Herald listing the luminaries seated in the boxes and the stalls.