Auditoriums 2

Charlotte's Auditoriums 1908 to 1955 

The period between 1908 and 1955 saw the arrival of several new auditoriums in Charlotte, culminating in the state-of-the-art combination of the Charlotte Coliseum and Ovens Auditorium:

• The City Auditorium at College and Fifth Street replaced an earlier one on Church Street that burned down after only four years in existence in 1895.  The “New Auditorium” as it was called, opened in time for the Democratic State Convention of 1908.  This gave Charlotte a lofty space and 4,500 seats for all manner of civic gatherings from basketball to band concerts by John Philip Sousa and arias by tenor Enrico Caruso.  In 1932 the building was dismantled and reconstructed as the Garr Tabernacle on Tuckaseegee Road.
• The Armory Auditorium was completed in 1929 and replaced the City Auditorium.  Despite the fact that it was inadequate as a venue for concerts, this was Charlotte’s only city auditorium until Ovens was built in 1955 and saw all manner of musical entertainment.  It met the same fate as the Academy of Music in 1954 when it was destroyed by fire.  Park Center replaced the Armory.  It is now known as the Grady Cole Center.
• The Charlotte Symphony, which was established between 1931 and 1932 by musician, conductor, composer and music teacher, Guillermo S. de Roxlo, had no fine concert hall to play in, although they did larger concerts in the Armory.  Their major venue, however, was Piedmont Junior High School auditorium, which was home to the Charlotte Symphony until 1955 when Ovens Auditorium was built.  Other school auditoriums were also used during this period for musical concerts of all kinds.
• When Ovens Auditorium and the first Charlotte Coliseum were built in 1955 they were truly state of the art.  Ovens, named for David Ovens, became the much needed home of the Charlotte Symphony and the new venue for musicals, operas, dramas, choral concerts and musical comedies.  Besides sports events the Coliseum provided a location for big name popular artists and bands.  Billy Graham held his month long 1958 revival here with overflowing crowds watching events on TV’s from the Oven’s Auditorium.  Inspirational hymns were a major part of the experience.

Today Charlotte boasts an abundance of new auditoriums to host the wide variety of musical entertainments that are performed here, from classical to alternative, from country to hip hop, from Broadway musicals to opera and everything in-between, but we should remember that the old Opera House, now almost forgotten, was the first step.

As Mrs. M.G. Hunter, born in 1877 and the daughter of the owner of the Opera House said in 1970:

“We were happy as we are today.  I guess maybe more, as we did not know too much about what was going on in other places……It (the Opera House) was all we had and we thought it was wonderful.”[1]