The Sheldon Concert Hall

History

The Sheldon Concert Hall, designed by 1904 World's Fair architect Louis Spiering, opened in October 1912 as the Sheldon Memorial, home of the Ethical Society of St. Louis and named for Walter Sheldon. Speakers there included Thurgood Marshall, Buckminster Fuller, Martha Gellhorn, and Margaret Mead, and the St. Louis League of Women Voters was founded in the room now called the Mary Pillsbury Greenroom. After the Ethical Society left for the county in 1964, the building became a community center and music room; a former Duke Ellington Orchestra singer later used it as a church for jazz and gospel, and a California attorney bought it in 1984. It has operated as a concert hall since 1986. The nonprofit Sheldon Arts Foundation, formed in 1988, bought the hall and annex and presented its first official season in 1994. Wikipedia calls the acoustically noted room the Carnegie Hall of St. Louis.