Eighty-five years ago this month, Toledo unveiled one of its crown jewels: The Peristyle at the Toledo Museum of Art.
While the museum proper got its start in 1907 — thanks to $50,000 in seed money and six acres of land donated along Monroe Street by Edward Drummond Libbey and his wife, Florence Scott Libbey (the community matched that seed money with $50,000 of its own in 20 days) — the adjoining Peristyle would not come into being for another 26 years.
Upon Mr. Libbey’s death in 1925, he bequeathed a $1 million endowment to the museum, a fund which has grown and helped sustain the arts repository in the decades since.
As for the Peristyle, that had long been Florence’s vision. It took two years and 2,500 laborers — a boon to the local work force during the Depression — to complete the Peristyle, longtime home of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra.
The 1,750-seat auditorium, seen in the 1955 Blade archive photo above with young Jane Tillotson gazing at the painted ceiling, opened on Jan. 10, 1933. The first performance was a gala dedication concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Leopold Stokowski.
The venue was designed by Edward B. Green of Buffalo and takes its name from the Hellenistic Greek style of architecture, albeit with a 20th century spin. In this case that meant a curving row of 28 Ionic columns.
The Peristyle has been remodeled several times over the years in pursuit of ever better acoustics. Yet it remains one of the city’s shining architectural wonders and a place where great music can still be heard nearly every weekend.
Go to thebladevault.com/memories to purchase historical photos taken by our award-winning staff of photographers, past and present, or to purchase combinations of stories and photos.
First Published January 15, 2018, 5:00 a.m.
