Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 01:11:00

A publishing magnate gave his hometown one of the largest pipe organs on earth - 1912 Portland got an instrument that would cost five million dollars to replace today. Merrill Auditorium, at 20 Myrtle Street inside Portland City Hall in Maine, is the 1,908-seat civic hall built around the mighty Kotzschmar Memorial Organ. The hall rose from a fire: when Portland's previous City Hall burned in 1908, the rebuilt 1912 building included a grand auditorium, and Cyrus H.K. Curtis - the Portland-born founder of the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies' Home Journal - commissioned Austin Organ Company's Opus 323 as a gift to the city, naming it for his childhood music teacher Hermann Kotzschmar. The organ is the civic treasure: the second-largest pipe organ in the world when installed, it made Portland create the position of Municipal Organist in 1912 - a post the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ has sustained since 1981 - and a two-year Centennial Renovation returned the fully revitalised instrument to service in September 2014. The 1997 rebuild made the modern hall: a bequest from Paul and Virginia Merrill funded a top-to-bottom renovation that renamed the auditorium, preserving the early-20th-century grandeur while adding modern staging, comfort and accessibility - the facility fee on every ticket still repays the bonds that completed the work. The tenants define Maine's cultural calendar: the Portland Symphony Orchestra and presenter Portland Ovations anchor the seasons, joined by Broadway tours, headline comedians, choral festivals and the beloved free summer organ concerts that keep the Kotzschmar working year-round. Practical notes: the hall sits a short walk from the Old Port's restaurants - pre-show dinner options abound; organ recital dates are the unique-to-Portland experience worth planning around, the orchestra-level rear rows balance the room's acoustics best, and City Hall's Congress Street location puts the arts district galleries within a ten-minute stroll.