Construction delays due to the finishing of the neighboring New York State Theatre (in time with the opening of the 1964 World's Fair), resulted in the excavation site being nicknamed "Lake Bing" after then-Met General Manager Rudolf Bing. After a long process of redesigns, revisions and opposing interests (provided by the Met wanting a more traditional design for its home, and the conflicting wishes of the architects of the other Lincoln Center venues), construction of Harrison's forty-third design of the Metropolitan Opera House began in the winter of 1963, the last of the three major Lincoln Center venues to be completed.
Young Rockefeller Center architect Wallace Harrison would be approached some 20 years later by officers of the New York Philharmonic Society and the Met to develop a new home for both institutions.Īs chief architect again for the development of Lincoln Center, Harrison was chosen to design the new opera house, to be built as the centerpiece of the new performing arts complex- a twenty-five acre, eighteen block site on the Upper West Side, chosen by Robert Moses as a major urban renewal and slum clearance project. replaced the opera house development with the Rockefeller Center complex this included a 70-story skyscraper, the RCA Building, which opened in 1933. With the development moving forward, John D. Financial problems and the following stock market crash of 1929 postponed the relocation of the Metropolitan Opera, and the complex became more commercial-based. As part of the development of the present-day Rockefeller Center site, there was to be a development with a new 4,000-seat opera house at its center. Planning for a new home for the Metropolitan Opera began as early as the mid-1920s, when the backstage facilities of the former house were becoming vastly inadequate for growing repertory and advancing stagecraft. Home to the Metropolitan Opera Company, the facility also hosts the American Ballet Theatre in the summer months.ġ3 Jazz at Lincoln Center Planning and construction With a seating capacity of approximately 3,850, the house is the largest repertory opera house in the world. It opened in 1966, replacing the original 1883 Metropolitan Opera House at Broadway and 39th Street. Part of Lincoln Center, the theater was designed by Wallace K. The Metropolitan Opera House (also known as The Met) is an opera house located on Broadway at Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City.
Wallace Harrison, Harrison & Abramovitz Architects
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