Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

No seat in the house is more than 45 feet from the stage - not even in the balcony. The Gary and Laura Maurer Concert Hall, at 4544 North Lincoln Avenue in Chicago's Lincoln Square, is the flagship performance room of the Old Town School of Folk Music, the storied teaching institution that has anchored the city's folk scene since 1957. The hall occupies the school's Lincoln Square West building, a handsome former public library the Old Town School converted when it moved north from its original Armitage Avenue home in 1998. The Chicago Tribune has praised its spectacular acoustics and sightlines, and many regulars rank the 430-seat room among the best listening spaces in Chicago - warm wood, assigned seating for most shows, and a scale that keeps every performance conversational. Programming mirrors the school's reach: folk and Americana at the core, extending through bluegrass, Celtic, blues, global ensembles, singer-songwriters and family concerts, with album-release shows and artist residencies threaded through the calendar. Touring legends share the season with faculty showcases and the school's own student ensembles - the distinction between stage and classroom stays deliberately thin. The surrounding campus completes the picture: classrooms and lesson studios fill the building around the hall, the Old Town School Music Store sells instruments in the lobby, and the smaller Szold Hall across the street handles general-admission shows. Thousands of students of all ages pass through weekly, making concert nights feel like community gatherings. Getting there is simple - the CTA Brown Line's Western stop is a few blocks away, with school and city lots beside the campus. The building is accessible via the Oakley Avenue entrance, and Lincoln Square's restaurants surround the block. One of Chicago's essential rooms.