The Meyerson turns 15

by David Dillon / The Dallas Morning News (September 5, 2004)

The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center was born in the giddiness of the early 1980s, when construction cranes were flying everywhere and "shoot the moon" was the mantra of the moment. It wouldn't be just another music palace, supporters insisted. Together with the new Dallas Museum of Art it would be the catalyst for a broad cultural awakening.

"You are not contemplating just a building, but the cultural life of Dallas for years to come," architect I.M. Pei told donors in 1982.

Mr. Meyerson himself observed that "if it turns out to be a spectacular architectural achievement and a brilliant acoustical achievement, it will have justified all the heat and fire and pain." And if it flopped "we will have spent 10 years to produce something like the squeak of a mouse."

The Meyerson turns 15 years old this week, a convenient if somewhat eccentric occasion for a retrospective assessment. Mr. Pei and acoustician Russell Johnson will be on hand, along with violinist Itzhak Perlman, conductor Claus Peter Flor and the host, Dallas Symphony Association president Fred Bronstein.

After a decade and a half, the Meyerson definitely doesn't squeak like a mouse.

Acoustically, it is the best hall of its generation, with a sound as sumptuous as warm brandy and a silk jacket.

Architecturally, it remains a mixed bag, a good example of Mr. Pei's elegant classical modernism but also aloof and somewhat intimidating, a piece of sculpture meant to be admired rather than embraced.

Promises of hefty economic benefits - the association predicted that the new hall would generate at least $25 million in new tax revenue and 500 housing units - proved delusional. No shops, restaurants, cafes or condos yet surround it. Across the street sits the moldering base of an abandoned 50-story skyscraper, a monument to the hubris of the era. A block away on Ross Avenue, on axis with the Meyerson's front door, stands an elaborate neo-classical rotunda, a true modern folly, with no uses and no tenants. So much for the economic clout of concert halls. Even in boom times, they tend to be about themselves.

The Meyerson was Mr. Pei's second public building in Dallas, after City Hall, and his first and only concert hall. Like most of his best work - the National Gallery of Art, the Bank of China, the Kennedy Library - it is a model of Euclidean precision in which squares intersect with rectangles embraced by ellipses. It has aged well, with none of the fatuous historical decoration of many of its contemporaries. Every surface shines, every joint and corner is razor-sharp.

The lobby is far grander than it needs to be, but that is part of its appeal. It was conceived not merely as an entrance or a preamble but as a grand public space where Dallas could gather to meet and greet. Mr. Pei frequently compared it to Charles Garnier's Paris Opera House - not the gold leaf and meringue plaster but the sense of occasion created by shifting perspectives and numerous changes in level. The combination of sweeping staircases and gracefully arcing windows and balconies create surprising spaces that, even after repeated visits, seduce us into wondering what's around this corner or at the top of that staircase.

The hall's most dramatic feature is the sweeping cone-shaped window that wraps two-thirds of the building. It was a bold - and extremely expensive - engineering stroke that set what could have been a static composition in motion. And despite widespread doubts about pointing so much glass toward the setting Texas sun, the lobby hasn't become a greenhouse. The combination of sunscreens and insulated glass works, and the framed views of the downtown skyline are stunning.

The auditorium provides a visual and emotional counterpoint to the chilliness of the lobby, with limestone and stainless steel giving way to mahogany, cherry, brass and onyx, and the spirit of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe yielding to that of Josef Hoffmann and Frank Lloyd Wright. Some critics complained that the contrast was forced and "schizoid," but it now seems more like a gracious and welcome change of pace.

Mr. Pei pledged from the start that the Meyerson would not be another precious enclave. "What good are all these cultural institutions if they don't serve the widest possible audience?" he asked. "We don't need more elitist places."

Stanley Marcus, a member of the building committee, went even further by opposing construction of a single-purpose hall.

"Half the people who attend concerts have some form of hearing impediment," he told the committee, "and half of the remaining half can't tell the difference or don't give a damn how it sounds."

Neither got his wish. The Meyerson's biggest drawback, architecturally and civically, continues to be its aloof, unneighborly character. Unlike Los Angeles' new Disney Hall or Lucerne's Culture and Congress Center, its shop, restaurant and box office are invisible from the street. In fact, the hall has no street presence whatsover. The main entrance is in the underground parking garage, with the box office, symphony store and luxe car of the month entombed beside it. A grand staircase, evocative of Garnier, rises from the catacombs to the main lobby, but it's not the same thing as seeing a crowd surging in from the street.

In fairness, Mr. Pei wanted the box office and symphony store at street level, with a grand mezzanine above, but that idea was scuttled for budget reasons. As a result, the Meyerson is deserted except for performances and the occasional major public event, such as the 2002 memorial service for Mr. Marcus. The architects for the proposed Dallas Center for the Performing Arts have vowed to do better by creating buildings with operable walls that open onto large shaded plazas. But as their recent revisions to the master plan show, they, too, are having problems cuddling up to the Meyerson.

It took eight years to finish, with much of the time spent in disputes between the symphony association and City Hall over construction delays and cost overruns. Originally $28 million, the Meyerson's price tag rose steadily to $49 million, then $75 million and finally to $84.5 million. Only some creative bookkeeping, such as omitting the cost of land, underground parking garage and parks from the estimates, concealed the total cost, closer to $110 million.

The delays and overruns created outrage of operatic proportions. "When I heard those figures I hit the roof," said then-Mayor Jack Evans. "I told them they were building the Taj Mahal."

In the short term, these problems fueled suspicions that arts institutions, and their star architects, couldn't be trusted with public money. While some of that suspicion has abated, the old public-private funding formulas - 60/40 for construction, 75/25 for land, have not returned. The $275 million Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, the newest silver bullet for the Arts District, aspires to be funded almost entirely with private money, as was the Nasher Sculpture Center.

The Meyerson has won its share of design awards over the years, including a national Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1991. The awards were significant, even though the competition was thin. The final decades of the 20th century were not a golden age for concert halls, the way they were for, let's say, art museums. The Bilbao Guggenheim, the Tate Modern, the Menil Collection, the Nasher and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the list goes on. Among concert halls, there's Disney, Lucerne and the Meyerson. That's pretty much the lot.

Dallas is justifiably proud of the Meyerson. It has exceeded all expectations acoustically and made the city a must-see for leading orchestras and conductors, even though comparatively few have shown up. But it has yet to supercharge the cultural life of Dallas or become the great public gathering place its creators envisioned.