Hollywood Bowl, Open-air concert hall in Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, US
Hollywood Bowl is an open-air concert hall in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, built in the Neues Bauen style with a modern bandshell. The venue features an acoustic system and holds about 17,500 spectators on rising terraced seating rows.
The venue opened in 1922 at a site called Daisy Dell, after the community raised funds and received support from Christine Wetherill Stevenson and Marie Rankin Clarke. The bandshell has since been rebuilt several times to improve acoustics and sightlines.
The name "Bowl" comes from the concave meadow, Daisy Dell, into which the amphitheatre was carved. Early tickets cost 25 cents under F. W. Blanchard's slogan "popular prices will prevail", and children performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1921, starting with Sibelius' Finlandia.
Visitors can buy food and beverages on-site or bring their own snacks, provided they avoid glass containers and cans. The venue sits in the hills and is best reached by car or organized shuttle buses, as parking spaces are limited.
Sculptor George Stanley, who designed the Oscar statuette, made the Muse Fountain that has stood outside the main entrance since 1940. From 1953 to 1972 a reflecting pool lay in front of the stage, and in the early 1980s Frank Gehry designed large fiberglass spheres placed inside the shell to dampen poor acoustics.
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