Tonhalle St. Gallen, Art Nouveau concert hall in St. Gallen, Switzerland.
Tonhalle St. Gallen is an Art Nouveau concert hall built with an innovative reinforced concrete frame and features decorative elements typical of the early 1900s. The building provides a stage for orchestra performances and contains modernized facilities from renovations in the 1990s.
The building was constructed between 1906 and 1909 and attracted renowned conductors such as Richard Strauss, Felix Weingartner, and Arturo Toscanini during its early years. Its reinforced concrete construction represented advanced engineering for the period.
The name Tonhalle simply means "sound hall". The St. Gallen Symphony Orchestra, which also plays for the theatre opposite, gives its concerts here, and guest orchestras appear as well. From 1941 until around 1990 the OLMA trade fair took over the building once a year as a drinking hall, halting concerts for up to a month.
The hall sits at Museumstrasse 25 on the Brühl, where the old town meets the museum quarter, opposite the St. Gallen Theatre. The Great Hall on the first floor seats 891 and can be reduced to 558 by dividing the room; the smaller chamber configuration holds 253, and the Intermezzo on the ground floor about 100. The stage was enlarged and a restaurant added in the 1990s renovation.
The building was designed using a reinforced concrete system by Robert Maillart, a pioneering engineer who introduced these construction methods in Switzerland. This structural approach was a technological innovation at the time and makes the hall an important example of early concrete architecture.
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