10. The MUNICIPAL AUDITORIUM, 

NE. corner Courtland and Gilmer Sts., now (1942) faces the street with a bare three-story brick wall streaked and blackened by a fire that destroyed the entire front of the building on the evening of November 11, 1940. In the gutted portion were Taft Hall, a convention room with a seating capacity of 500, and the assembly rooms and armory for the State military forces. A temporary walkway bridges the ruins and leads to the doorway of the auditorium.

The main hall, which has a seating capacity of 5,163, was virtually undamaged and is still in use. Its horseshoe-shaped arena is surrounded by boxes, a dress circle, and a balcony, all reached by broad ramps • leading up from the foyer. The console of the large Austin organ, which was installed by the Atlanta Music Festival Association in 1911, is at the rear of the stage, but the 6,000 pipes, ranging in length from a few inches to 32 feet, are entirely hidden in the ceiling. The sound is emitted through grilles 80 feet long above the orchestra pit.

Plans for the structure were begun in the fall of 1906, when the abandonment of a projected exposition left unexpended the public funds that had been raised for sponsoring it. At a mass meeting a resolution was adopted to urge the building of a city auditorium, and a committee of 25 was appointed to present the proposal to the mayor and council. Since the city charter prohibited officials from assuming obligations that would extend beyond the year in which they were made, the Atlanta Auditorium-Armory Company, a private corporation, was organized on February 7, 1907, to issue bonds in the amount of $175,000. These were sold to an insurance company, and the city was then able to assume the contracts annually and redeem the bonds from surplus funds in the treasury. The plain red-brick building was completed in 1909 at a cost of $192,000.

During the years 1936 to 1938, more than $600,000 was spent by the city and the Works Progress Administration in completely remodeling and redecorating the theater part of the building. John Robert Dillon, the Atlanta architect who designed the building originally, drew the plans for the remodeling.

Since its erection the auditorium has served as the setting for a wide variety of entertainment and for many colorful events in the history of the city. Recorded on its calendar are concerts, operas, political rallies, flower and automobile shows, graduation exercises, boxing and wrestling matches, basketball tournaments, roller skating derbies, dances, and even circuses sponsored by local organizations.

The capacity of the building has been taxed many times. From 1910 until 1930 the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York produced annually at the auditorium a series of operas, and an audience of more than 5,000 at a performance was not unusual. When Caruso sang in Atlanta for the first time in 1910 in a presentation of Aida, he faced an audience of more than 7,000, for all available standing room was sold before the crowds could be turned away from the box office. Another unusually large crowd was that which assembled to hear Franklin D. Roosevelt speak during the presidential campaign in 1932. Among other events that have attracted large numbers were the meetings of the Baptist World Alliance in the summer of 1939 and the ball celebrating the premiere of the film production of Gone With the Wind in December of the same year.

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