User:CascadeUrbanite/sandbox/Puget Sound region

=Benaroya Hall=

Benaroya Hall is a concert hall in Seattle, Washington, United States. The home of the Seattle Symphony, it features two auditoria: the S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium, a 2,500-seat performance venue, as well as the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall, which seats 536. Opened in September 1998 at a cost of $120 million, Benaroya quickly became noted for its technology-infused acoustics designed by Cyril M. Harris, touches of luxury and prominent location in a complex thoroughly integrated into the downtown area. Benaroya occupies an entire city block in the center of the city and has helped double the Seattle Symphony's budget and number of performances. The lobby of the hall features a large contribution of glass art, such as one given the title Crystal Cascade, by world-renowned artist Dale Chihuly.

Benaroya Hall is named for noted philanthropist Jack Benaroya, whose $15.8 million donation was the first and largest of many for construction of the facility.

The hall was designed by Seattle-based LMN Architects, who was selected by the symphony's board of directors on December 28, 1993; the board later selected Baugh Construction as the general contractor for the hall. For its work, LMN was awarded the National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 2001. The structural engineer on the project was Magnusson Klemencic Associates.

The building sits directly above the Great Northern Tunnel, which carries the primary rail corridor through the city, and adjacent to the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel, which has a station directly integrated into the building. The performance hall is insulated from the rumbles of the traffic in these tunnels and the streets outside the hall by floating on rubber pads which insulate it from the outer shell of the building. These same noise-insulation features would also serve to dampen the destructive effects of any prospective earthquakes.

History
The site of Benaroya Hall, a mostly empty block bounded by University and Union Street and Second and Third Avenue, was majority-owned by Marathon U.S. Realty, a subsidiary of Canadian Pacific Railway; a small portion, owned by Wright Runstad, was occupied by the Jones Building, a seven-story building originally constructed in 1926 by J.K. McDowall as the McDowall Building.

The Seattle Symphony had used the Seattle Opera House, located on the Seattle Center grounds, as its main performance hall since the Century 21 Exposition was held on the grounds in 1962. However, the symphony began to look for a new site by the 1980s as the hall became overbooked due to demand from the symphony as well as its other tenants, Pacific Northwest Ballet and Seattle Opera; a renovation of the 5th Avenue Theatre was rejected due to economical and practical issues. In April 1986, the Kreielsheimer Foundation donated a square block of property north of Seattle Center to the city under the stipulation of developing it for cultural or educational purposes within four years, requiring that the land be sold with proceeds donated to charity otherwise. With that in mind, planning for a new hall on the site commenced in November 1987, with a preliminary design unveiled on May 25, 1988; designed by LMN Architects with acoustical input from Cyril M. Harris, the new hall would have seated 2,800 patrons, with 1,900 on the main floor and 900 on the surrounding balconies.