It’s official: Philadelphia Orchestra’s home now called Marian Anderson Hall

It’s Marian Anderson Hall, now and forever.

With apt pomp and following the strains of a jubilant string trio, officials Saturday afternoon renamed the Kimmel Center’s main concert hall for the contralto, civil rights figure, and daughter of a city that perhaps hasn’t celebrated her legacy quite as much as it should.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker stood in a sunny Kimmel lobby along with a crowd of elected officials, philanthropists, arts leaders, and several hundred onlookers to celebrate the melding of “one of the preeminent concert halls in the nation” with the name of “one of Philadelphia’s giants.”

June 8, 2024 was declared “Marian Anderson Day” in both the city and commonwealth. Parker presented one of the city’s Liberty Bell replicas to Anderson posthumously through her family, including Ginette DePreist, whose husband was Anderson’s nephew, the late conductor James DePreist. And at the end of the ceremony, a royal purple curtain was lifted on the hall’s wood exterior to reveal a new sign:

Marian Anderson Hall

Home of the Philadelphia Orchestra

Orchestra music and artistic director Yannick Nézet-Séguin told the crowd that a photograph of Anderson hangs in his studio backstage, and that perhaps it will become his new routine “before stepping on the stage to just look at her and try to be worthy. She will be our North Star guiding our future and continuing to make a lasting impact. At the heart of our work is the belief that the arts are for everyone.”

The hall previously carried a commercial moniker — it was Verizon Hall since the arts center’s beginnings nearly a quarter-century ago — and now it boasts a rarity: a Black woman’s name atop an important civic building.

Marian Anderson Hall is also unusual among arts centers, colleges and health-care campuses nationally, where buildings are typically named for individual donors or corporate sponsors. Here, the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra has taken on the name of an artist, and a homegrown one at that.

City Council President Kenyatta Johnson said that when people talk about the Philadelphia Orchestra, “we don’t think about the role that African Americans have played in this particular culture. But now and throughout the lifetime of this particular edifice, young people all throughout this world, all the tourists that will come through this building, little black girls, little brown boys,” will learn about Marian Anderson.

The decision to rename the hall was announced in February after Leslie Anne Miller and her husband, Richard B. Worley — both longtime arts leaders — donated $25 million to the Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center Inc., but then ceded naming rights, choosing to honor Anderson instead.

Anderson, born in South Philadelphia in 1897, forged a major international career as a pioneering vocalist. She was a recitalist both in Europe and the United States and a recording artist, and was the first Black artist to sing at the Metropolitan Opera.

But she made her biggest mark on Easter Sunday, 1939. After being turned away from a concert date in Washington, D.C.’s Constitution Hall because of her race, Anderson sang instead in front of the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of 75,000 and a radio listenership in the millions.

The event, which made her an icon in the struggle for social justice even before the civil rights movement, was arranged with the intervention of Franklin D. Roosevelt cabinet member Harold Ickes and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Saturday’s festivities brought a redolent reminder of 1939. Members of the Anderson family attended the rededication, and they, along with Eleanor Roosevelt’s great-grandson Nicholas W. Roosevelt, were expected at the Great Stages Gala on Saturday evening to be hosted by Queen Latifah. Tickets started at $1,500 for the party and first-ever concert in Marian Anderson Hall, with a program featuring the orchestra led by Nézet-Séguin with sopranos Angel Blue and Latonia Moore, actress and singer Audra McDonald, and pianist Marcus Roberts.

The event raised more than $1.3 million (before expenses) to benefit ongoing restoration of the Academy of Music, and operations of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center Inc., a spokesperson said.

Saturday’s events were a bright spot in an arts community still reeling from the abrupt closure Friday of the Kimmel’s neighbor, University of the Arts. Cultural groups are still climbing back from the pandemic, and here was one of its biggest citizens that didn’t make it.

» READ MORE: UArts closure in students and faculty's own words and pictures

Next door to the Kimmel on Saturday afternoon, UArts’ Hamilton Hall was quiet save for a half-dozen or so demonstrators and protest signs occupying the front steps. The university’s board remains largely silent about what precipitated the shutdown.

But Saturday, all was cheerful at the Kimmel, where the orchestra was in the last stretch of an encouraging season. Attendance has rebounded. The ensemble performed for houses that were 79% full — exceeding the pre-pandemic capacity of 69% in 2018-19 on about the same number of total concerts.

Nearly a third of concerts were sold out in the orchestra’s 2023-24 downtown season.

Leaders hope the Marian Anderson rededication will add to the momentum, particularly as the combined orchestra and arts center eyes its most ambitious comprehensive fundraising campaign ever.

“These are hugely expensive buildings to maintain, and this center started as a public-private partnership,” said Worley, who was a longtime board chairman of the orchestra. He said he hoped the gift he and Miller gave will “inspire the private part of it to play its role.”