Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 01:32:00

Ross Perot put up ten million dollars on one condition: the building would carry the name of his company president, not his own. The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, at 2301 Flora Street in the Dallas Arts District, opened in September 1989 after nine contentious years and a final cost of 106 million dollars. The design team was the best available: I. M. Pei took the architecture and Russell Johnson of Artec the acoustics, producing a civic monument the New York Times compared to the Paris Opera - a limestone-and-travertine cube whose conoid glass windows hold 211 panels, no two alike. The Eugene McDermott Concert Hall is the instrument: a traditional 2,062-seat shoebox with an 85-foot ceiling, 74 concrete reverberation-chamber doors weighing up to 2.5 tons each, 56 acoustical curtains and cherrywood panelling - adjustable acoustics that rank the room among the world's great orchestra halls. The hall rescued its tenant's trajectory: the Dallas Symphony Orchestra had suspended operations entirely in the mid-1970s; the Meyerson's opening crowned a civic recovery funded by a public-private split after voters approved bonds in 1982, and the orchestra has anchored the building since. The organ completes the room: the Lay Family concert organ's 4,535 pipes rise behind the stage, and the building's lobby, restaurant and sculpture garden host weddings, lectures and civic events between concert weeks - the city owns the building, the Symphony Association runs it. Practical notes: the M-Line streetcar stops at Olive and Flora and the Arts District garages sit under the block; choir terrace seats behind the orchestra are the bargain with a conductor's-eye view, the reverberation doors mean the room sounds different by configuration, and free building tours run on select weekdays.