Hollywood Bowl Bandshell - Hollywood, CA
N 34° 06.756 W 118° 20.337
11S E 376510 N 3775450
The Hollywood Bowl, with a distinctive bandshell designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.
Waymark Code: WMMEDC
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 09/08/2014
Views: 12
The Hollywood Bowl name proper refers to the amphitheater in which the audience sits, which is built onto the hillside. However, the locus of the amphitheater is the Hollywood Bowl bandshell, which has undergone several metamorphoses before reaching the current version.
According to (
visit link) there were four shells at the site, including the present one:
1922-1925: There was no bandshell, but an awning over the stage. Audiences sat on moveable wooden benches.
1926: Permanent seating and a shell were added. The shell offered noticeably poor acoustics.
1927: Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright's son, designed a shell shaped like a pyramid, with excellent acoustics. However, its Southwestern avant-garde style put audiences off.
1928: Lloyd Wright redesigned the shell as a series of fiberglass concentric arches (similar , which could be disassembled in the offseason, but weather destroyed it.
1929-2003: A permanent shell related to Lloyd Wright's 1928 design is built. Parts of the shell were replaced at various times, including some of the arches by Frank Gehry in the 1980s.
2004-present: A full replacement shell is built, larger than the previous one, and which incorporates design elements of the two Lloyd Wright shells and the 1929 shell. Video screens were added throughout the amphitheater when the shell was replaced.
The coordinates are for the stage of the shell.