Arizona - Music and Performing Arts
- By Smithsonian.com
- Smithsonian.com, November 06, 2007, Subscribe
Havasu Falls plunges a hundred feet into a pool of turquoise water in Havasu Canyon. Courtesy of Joel Grimes/Arizona Office of Tourism
Once a vaudeville performance hall, the Orpheum Theatre in Phoenix has recently experienced a $14-million restoration and preservation project. Built in the Spanish Baroque Revival style in 1929, the Orpheum is the last example of theatre palace architecture in the city and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
Frank Lloyd Wright was greatly inspired by the Arizona landscape. He designed over 50 buildings that would have been at home in the arid desert plains of the state and built approximately one-third of them, including the Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium on the Arizona State University campus at Tempe. One of Wright's last projects, the hall was built in 1964 and designed with acoustics in mind. Wright also built a winter camp for himself in Arizona called Taliesin West, where he showcased many of his theories and began a school for architects. The facility is now the seat of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
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