The first home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra was the Old Boston Music Hall which was threatened in 1893 by a city road-building/rapid transit project. That summer, the BSO's founder, Major Henry Lee Higginson, organized a corporation to finance a new and permanent home for the orchestra.

Symphony Hall opened on October 15, 1900, with an inaugural gala led by music director Wilhelm Gericke. The architects McKim, Mead & White of New York engaged Wallace Clement Sabine, a young assistant professor of physics at Harvard, as their acoustical consultant, and Symphony Hall became the first auditorium designed in accordance with scientifically-derived acoustical principles.

Widely regarded as one of the finest concert halls in the world, it is 61 feet high, 75 feet wide and 124 feet long from the lower back wall to the front of the stage. With the exception of the wooden floors, the hall is built of brick, steel, and plaster, with only a moderate amount of decoration. Symphony Hall seats 2,625 people during the orchestra's subscription season and 2,371 during the Pops season, when the banks of orchestra seats are replaced by tables and chairs.

The Symphony Hall organ, an Aeolian Skinner designed by G. Donald Harrison and installed in 1949, is considered one of the finest concert hall organs in the world.

A couple of interesting points for observant concert-goers: Beethoven is the only composer whose name was inscribed on one of the plaques that trim the stage and balconies; the other plaques were left empty since it was felt that only Beethoven's popularity would remain unchanged. The initials "BMH" for "Boston Music Hall," as the building was originally to have been called, appear on the stairwell banisters at the Huntington Avenue side, originally planned as the main entrance. But the old Boston Music Hall was gutted only after the new building, Symphony Hall, was opened.

Information courtesy of the Boston Symphony Orchestra