The land was donated in the 1880s for public use forever, the first hall was built with a saloonkeeper's bequest, and the current one was funded by four sons honouring their mother. Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, at 321 Mercer Street on the Seattle Center campus, is the Pacific Northwest's premier performing arts house. The site has been reinvented three times: the 1928 Civic Auditorium - the House that Suds Built, after James Osborne's 20,000-dollar gift - was rebuilt into the Seattle Opera House for the opening day of the 1962 World's Fair, with Stravinsky guest-conducting; the 2003 transformation kept only 30 percent of that structure and produced an essentially new building. The naming honours a patron: cell-phone pioneer Craig McCaw and his three brothers gave 20 million dollars toward the 127-million-dollar project, renaming the hall for their mother Marion Oliver McCaw Garrison - a founding Seattle Opera board member - with public bonds and private gifts completing the funding partnership. The house serves two world-class tenants: Seattle Opera and Pacific Northwest Ballet present roughly 150 performances a year in the 2,900-seat Susan Brotman Auditorium, backed by a new stage, fly system and orchestra pit; the LMN Architects design wraps the lobbies in a five-storey glass wall opening onto the Kreielsheimer Promenade's light-scrim public plaza. The campus completes the evening: McCaw Hall shares Seattle Center with the Space Needle, Climate Pledge Arena and the Chihuly garden, its 380-seat Nesholm Family Lecture Hall and Prelude Cafe filling out a building that also hosts concerts, lectures, weddings and the region's largest free health clinic. Practical notes: the Seattle Center Monorail from Westlake and the RapidRide D line beat event-night parking; PNB's Nutcracker season and Seattle Opera's Ring cycles are the hot tickets, the second-tier center rows balance the pit sound best for opera, and the promenade's glowing scrim panels at dusk are the architectural moment - arrive before curtain.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 321 Mercer Street, Seattle, WA, United States, 98109

Website: https://www.mccawhall.com

Cover Charge: 1

Capacity: 2900

Opening Date: 28/06/2003

Accessible