Grunewald Hall (also known as Grunewald Opera House) was a New Orleans treasure. In its heyday, it was easily the most popular concert hall in the south and had it not suffered such an ill twist of fate that cut short its wonderful service to both the city and the performers who enjoyed making use of its fine acoustics and variety of spacious performance settings, it no doubt would have eventually seen the National Register of Historic Places. There is one thing that remains certain in its near-twenty year standing, however: very few performance halls – even historic ones – are marveled over as much as the Grunewald was.

Front view

Around 1852, Louis Grunewald began building what would be one of the most enormous music firms in the country when he embarked upon the trade of music dealership in Lafayette City. Once he was prosperous enough, Charles Hillger, a German-American architect, constructed the concert hall that bore the enterprising merchant Grunewald’s name. That was in 1873. J. Curtis Waldo, a local publisher and photo-engraver, issued his Illustrated Visitors’ Guide to New Orleans in 1879 in which he featured Grunewald Hall, calling its monstrous and palatial structure one of Hillger’s “happiest” designs.

Front view from a different angle

Located on Barrone Street between Canal and Commons, Grunewald Hall’s architectural style was of Bavarian Baroque calico, possibly a conscious choice on Grunewald’s part – he was, after all, a native Bavarian. Its front end alone occupied great proportions of 103 feet by a depth of 160 feet. Its interior was equally breathtaking, all superbly frescoed, and decorated with portraits of the ancient and modern leading musicians of the world. The hall’s many facets included two large principal halls (a “grand concert salon” seating over 1,000, and a smaller hall designed for chamber music), a spacious apartment and a ground floor housing the Grunewald Music Store as well what was reputed to be the largest piano showroom in the world (this large stock also included organs, and wind and string musical instruments). Seemingly the most meticulous of practical details were attended to every bit as much as the artistic tones: many renowned musicians of the era declared Grunewald Hall to have the most perfect acoustics of any concert hall in America.

Throughout the 19th century, numerous well-known performers from across the country would deliver memorable concerts and other productions at Grunewald Hall. As it was also the site of one of the most beautiful and commodious assembly rooms on the country, numerous businesses and other organizations would hold events there, be them enterprising, entertaining, ceremonial in nature.

Program of one of the many concerts performed at Grunewald Hall

By the early 1890’s, Louis Grunewald was in the midst of preparing his next big enterprise: a hotel that would serve as a rear extension to the ornate concert hall. Tragically though, Grunewald Hall was destroyed in a fire in 1892. The exact details of this fire are unknown. The concert hall was rebuilt as the Hotel Grunewald a year later, whict still stands today as the Roosevelt-Waldorf (still in Louis Grunewald’s original hotel building). Though the concert hall was no more, Grunewald’s domination in all facets of the music business continued well into the 20th century.

Note: At this time, only photos of the building’s front exterior are available. Whether any visuals depicting the interior even exist is not known.

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Recreation of the fire, made in Photoshop