ABOUT THE COOLIDGE AUDITORIUM
In October 1924, Elizabeth Sprague
Coolidge offered Congress a gift of $60,000 (about $632,000
in today's dollars)
to finance the construction of an auditorium for the Music
Division at the Library of Congress. Mrs. Coolidge might not
have imagined it would cost more than a million dollars to
renovate her gift in 1989-1997. But it is not inconceivable
that she could have envisioned the multifarious tapestry that
music in America has become since the first concert in October
1925-.
Originally designed and built for chamber music, the Coolidge
Auditorium today reflects the diversity of American music,
featuring artists from a wide range of musical genres: classical
music of the past and the present, jazz, gospel and spirituals,
blues, traditional and contemporary folk, popular songs and
musical theater, soul, dance music, bebop, and rock-and-roll.
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