Jesse Auditorium

Under a dome rising 180 feet above the University of Missouri's quadrangle sits Jesse Auditorium, the concert room of Jesse Hall. Morris Frederick Bell designed the building, completed in 1895 at a cost of a quarter of a million dollars, with William Lincoln Garver supervising construction; a remodelling in 1953 gave the auditorium its present 1,732 seats. The dome has been lit at night since 1987 — white as a rule, gold at Homecoming, green during Engineers' Week — and beneath it the University Concert Series brings touring orchestras, singers and Broadway companies to Columbia. The same room graduates the university's students, which is a good deal of a Missourian life to spend under one ceiling.