Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:34:00

The University of Arizona's red-brick auditorium has been Tucson's main stage since the Roosevelt era. Centennial Hall at 1020 East University Boulevard opened on 22 April 1937 as simply "the Auditorium," designed by campus architect Roy Place - the man responsible for the university's signature red-brick look - and inaugurated with a two-hour program for 2,500 people that included a cantata called Land of Light, a Thornton Wilder one-act, ballet, football-game films and the crowd singing All Hail, Arizona to close. For half a century the hall served as campus lecture room, movie house and concert stage before a 4-million-dollar renovation completed in 1985 rebuilt it for the touring age: the old backstage wall was demolished and the building extended, growing the stage from 2,000 to nearly 5,000 square feet with full fly space, and the renovated house was renamed Centennial Hall for the university's hundredth anniversary. The 2,500-seat room - about 1,780 in the orchestra and 740 in a continuous no-overhang mezzanine - remains among the largest performance venues in southern Arizona. The modern identity is twin-track: Arizona Arts Live, the university's presenter, brings more than twenty annual programs of classical, jazz, dance and international artists, while Broadway in Tucson - which arrived in 2010 when Wicked played the hall and now operates as the resident touring series - fills week-long runs of the biggest national tours, from Hamilton-tier titles to family musicals. College of Fine Arts convocations and campus ceremonies round out the calendar. The University Boulevard address puts the hall at the campus gateway, next to the Arizona State Museum and a streetcar stop that links it straight down to Fourth Avenue and downtown, with the Tyndall Avenue garage three minutes' walk away. Nearly ninety years in, Roy Place's auditorium still does exactly what it did on opening night - gather Tucson under one red-brick roof for the big show.