SLSO Stories

Follow Along with the Powell Hall Expansion and Renovation

Powell Hall is one of America’s most acoustically renowned and visually stunning concert halls—and home to your St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. We’re renovating and expanding the 98-year-old building to preserve and enhance our civic treasure for generations to come.

This project is inspired by you: our goal is to provide greater access to music, an even more welcoming and comfortable experience for all, and a creative hub that helps us build connections through the power of music.

The revitalized Powell Hall will open in 2025 to coincide with the building’s centennial. We look forward to celebrating with you.

Learn more about the expansion and renovation

January 30, 2025

When audiences return to Powell Hall in September 2025, the auditorium will feature improved safety and code compliance. Throughout January, crews working on Powell Hall’s renovation installed guardrails at the front of the mezzanine and handrails along the balcony’s stairs, providing much needed stability and mobility assistance. The sleek, black supports will be finished with details that match the auditorium’s aesthetic.

A priority for the project, safety and accessibility measures will be upgraded throughout the venue, including new elevators, more ADA and companion seating located on various levels of Powell Hall, and adjustments to the auditorium’s Orchestra level slope to make it code compliant and easier to navigate.

New guardrails will improve the safety of Powell Hall.

  • January 23, 2025

    The SLSO’s dozens of percussion instruments will move out of any available nook and cranny and into organized new storage spaces with the renovation and expansion of Powell Hall. Recently, steel supports were installed in the dedicated Percussion Room located in the back of house expansion, part of a holistic plan to provide better storage for the SLSO’s many […]

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  • December 30, 2024

    The first of many millwork finishes have been installed in the Jack C. Taylor Music Center. New lockers have been added to musicians’ dressing rooms, bringing the backstage expansion of the project one step closer to completion. The new dressing rooms address a glaring inequity in Powell Hall—the lack of dressing spaces for women or […]

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  • December 20, 2024

    Construction crews at Powell Hall are busy working on a crucial element of the auditorium—the floors. After removing the seats and existing wood floor, the floor was reshaped. This included adding a cross-auditorium aisle on the floor level, modifying the slope of the floor to improve accessibility, and deepening the rows in the Boxes, Dress […]

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  • November 18, 2024

    With repainting in Powell Hall’s auditorium nearly complete, crews have begun to freshen up one of the building’s most iconic features: the grand foyer. Scaffolding has been erected to clean and repaint the space, whose design was inspired in part by the chapel at the Palace of Versailles. Crews will meticulously clean the gold leaf […]

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  • October 24, 2024

    As the expansion and renovation of Powell Hall continues, amenities are being added to maintain St. Louis as an international destination for musicians. This includes adding twelve practice rooms for musicians—a new amenity at the Midtown venue. Previously, musicians would utilize space where they could find it to warm up or practice, including the boiler […]

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  • October 16, 2024

    Powell Hall’s auditorium is sparkling following extensive painting and cleaning work inside the historic venue. For several months, crews have been carefully cleaning the gold leaf on the walls and revamped all the painted surfaces—including the iconic dome—to make the hall’s nationally recognized aesthetic shine anew. Eight stories of scaffolding used to reach the heights of the […]

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  • September 23, 2024

    With the structural steel erected and spray fireproofing applied, construction crews at the Jack C. Taylor Music Center—home of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra—have begun enclosing the new lobby, a focal point of the 64,000-square-foot expansion project. Recently, crews began installing sheathing—exterior panels that cover the structural steel and starts to layer the building’s exterior walls. The lobby is expected to be […]

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  • September 3, 2024

    The new lobby at the expanded Powell Hall reached a new milestone recently when construction crews poured concrete for the final section of a grand spiral staircase.  Unifying three levels of the lobby, the staircase will be a spectacular focal point of the new space, providing connection points to the auditorium. While the concrete has […]

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  • August 14, 2024

    The façade of the new lobby expansion at Powell Hall is one step closer to completion after a team of architects, construction managers, general contractor, and masons reviewed a mock-up of the building’s exterior on August 13. The constructability mock-up—a small cross-section of building’s exterior mimicking the final product—had two main goals: to give the design team […]

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  • August 2, 2024

    One of the most photographed elements of Powell is ready for its close up.  The iconic dome, as well as the most of the auditorium’s interior, has been cleaned and repainted in preparation for the building’s reopening in September 2025. Although portions of the ornate wall and ceiling have been touched up over the years, […]

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  • July 26, 2024

    If you’ve walked or driven past Powell Hall recently, you’ll have noticed major changes to the lobby expansion. With much of the interior structure constructed, crews have shifted to building the steel shell that will envelop the new space. The design of the new lobby, created by the internationally acclaimed architecture firm Snøhetta, features curved […]

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