Irvine Auditorium

An organ came first. Built for Philadelphia's Sesquicentennial Exposition of 1926 and given to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, the Curtis Organ needed a room, and Irvine Auditorium — from the office of Horace Trumbauer, whose chief designer was Julian Abele — was raised around it between 1926 and 1932, opening in May 1929. Nearly eleven thousand pipes still speak from its chambers, placing it among the two dozen largest instruments in the world by rank. The building's Gothic manner has always divided opinion, and its acoustics were harder still to defend; between 1997 and 2000 Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates stripped out the side balconies, cutting the seating from 1,976 to 1,260 and giving the room a clarity it had never possessed. It stands on Spruce Street and serves the university for concerts, lectures and ceremony.