Wright's Baghdad opera house and Gammage Auditorium: in search of regional modernity

On June 12, 1961, the board approved another contract with Taliesin Architects to proceed with final drawings for interiors and equipment, requesting that all possible economies be considered. Taliesin Architects worked on final drawings through the fall of 1961, and these were approved on December 28. Until then the building had been referred to as the Frank Lloyd Wright Auditorium. After a major gift in memory of Gammage that paid for the auditorium's organ, Durham recommended that the building be named the Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium, an idea that the regents approved. Durham, autobiography, chap. 6, 121-22; and Minutes, Arizona Board of Regents, vol. 28, November 25, 1961, 2, ASUA.

The invitation for and opening of bids were noted in Minutes, Arizona Board of Regents, vol. 29, February 7, 1962, 15, and April 9, 1962, 11, ASUA. Drawings and specifications were ready for bids to be invited on April 10, 1962, the specifications dated March 1962. Six bids were opened for review on April 24. The contract was awarded to the low base bidder, the Robert E. McKee Company of El Paso, one of the West's largest builders, then completing the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs (1956-62). See "ASU Auditorium Bid Opening April 10," Arizona Republic, February 25, 1962, 32E; and "ASU Receives Six Bids on Memorial Auditorium," Arizona Republic, April 25, 1962, 19. On the McKee Company, see Leon Metz, Robert E. McKee, Master Builder. Grady Gammage Jr., his father's only child, broke ground for the auditorium on May 23, 1962. "Son Breaks Ground to Honor Gammage," Arizona Republic, May 24, 1962. On the cost per seat, see also "Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium," Builder/Architect, June 1964, 15-16.

110. The Board of Regents acknowledged that "the present and anticipated enrollment call for a much larger auditorium. However, the great cost had led to the decision to concentrate on more perfect acoustics and visibility in a smaller auditorium and with more frequent use of each seat and greater usability of the auditorium by each department"; Capital Budget Request--1960-61, November 30, 1959, URC (MSS-98), box 1, folder 3, ASUA.

111. James Yeater, Report of the Auditorium Planning Committee, n.d.; and Auditorium Committee, "Functions of Proposed Auditorium," July 23, 1960, URC (MSS-98), box 69, folder 2, ASUA. On reverberation time, see Vern O. Knudsen, Architectural Acoustics (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1932), 40-41, 119-50, 353-66, 377-88; and Knudsen and Cyril M. Harris, Acoustical Designing in Architecture (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1950), 133-71. On Knudsen, see Emily Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 (Cambridge, Mass,: MIT Press, 2002), 99-107, 252-54.

112. Vern O. Knudsen and L. P. Delsasso, "Acoustics of the Grady Gammage Auditorium, Arizona State University" (paper, delivered at the 5e Congres International d'Acoustique, Liege, Belgium, September 7-14, 1965), typescript, GGMA, Ephemera, TAA. See Izenour, Theater Design, 330-34, 433-34; and Izenour, in discussion with the author, May 7, 2002.