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Lisner Auditorium (George Washington University)

Year
1943
Style
Neoclassical
City
Washington, DC
Collection
the city beautiful
Lisner Auditorium (George Washington University)
Photo: AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0
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Lisner Auditorium on George Washington University's Foggy Bottom campus was designed in 1940 and completed in 1946, funded by a one-million-dollar bequest from university trustee Abram Lisner. Built in the stripped classicist style, it seats 1,350 and today is home to the Washington Concert Opera. Its 1946 grand opening became a city-wide flashpoint for desegregating Washington's theaters and pushed GW students to demand the university admit African American students.

the building

Stripped classicism. Architect Waldron Faulkner, born in Paris and trained at Yale, designed the auditorium in a stripped classicist idiom drawn from the late Art Deco period.

the style

The stripped classicist style pares Classical symmetry down to flat, simplified surfaces with minimal ornament, an approach common to late Art Deco public buildings of the early 1940s.

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the architect

Waldron Faulkner (1898-1978) was born in Paris, France, and educated at Yale before designing Lisner Auditorium, extending the modernist ethos for which he was known.

significance

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990 for its dual significance as an architectural work and as a performance venue; its 1946 opening became a catalyst in the desegregation of Washington's theaters and of George Washington University itself.

nearby

All 315 buildings in Washington, DC