English: Built in 1938-1940, this Modern International-style concert hall was designed by Eliel Saarinen and Eero Saarinen to house performance spaces for the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and other local musical organizations. Named by Edward L. Kleinhans, whom donated the money for the building’s construction in 1934, the building was named in the memory of his wife, Mary Seaton Kleinhans, and his mother, Mary Livingston Kleinhans. The performance hall was partially funded with money from the New Deal-era Public Works Administration (PWA), with local architects F. J. and W. A. Kidd assisting with the building’s design and construction, with lighting consultant Stanley McCandless and acoustical consultant Charles C. Potwin assisting with the design of the building’s performance spaces. The building was opened on October 19, 1940 with a concert by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1964, the concert hall was the site of a speech by Robert F. Kennedy, whom was running to be elected as a Democratic Senator representing New York, which he gave in front of an audience of 6,000 people, and in 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech in the building’s main auditorium titled “The Future of Integration.”

The footprint of the building features two opposing parabolic curves, which make up the walls at the rear of the larger main auditorium and the smaller Mary Seaton Room, with the main auditorium being shaped like a triangle with curved sides and a curved vertex at the rear of the building, with a low one-story wing framing the main auditorium, consisting of offices and support spaces, as well as slender canopies and entrance vestibules. On the sides of the exterior of the main auditorium are stair-stepping walls that contain stairways to the upper balcony inside the auditorium, and a lobby cuts through the building between the two auditoriums, connecting the entrance vestibules on either side of the building, which contains open stairways to an upper level that provides access to the balcony of the main auditorium. The building’s exterior is clad in buff brick with limestone trim panels on the canopies, framing the entrance doors, the Mary Seaton Room, and on the walls framing the front reflecting pool, with an aluminum curtain wall containing exit doors and glazing on either side of the rear portion of the Mary Seaton Room, providing a visual break in the building’s exterior between the main volume of the performance hall and the larger adjacent structure that houses the lobby and main auditorium. The building’s interior is relatively simple with unadorned walls, clean lines, wood paneling and doors, ceilings in the auditoriums with ceilings featuring multiple bulkheads that conceal lightings and vents, as well as improve the acoustics of the performance spaces, and cantilevered stairways in the lobby.

The Kleinhans Music Hall is a notable early example of Modernism and the International Style in the United States, and is also notable for being one of the boldest early designs by Eliel and Eero Saarinen, the latter going on to design the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Dulles Airport Terminal in Virginia near Washington, DC, and the TWA Terminal at New York City’s John F. Kennedy Airport during the 1960s, with the parabolic curves utilized in this building being more heavily emphasized in those later structures. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1989. Today, the building remains a major concert hall in the city of Buffalo, and still houses the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Buffalo Chamber Music Society, with the building’s various performance, lobby, and rehearsal spaces being rented out for local performing arts groups and events.