Playing “I Spy” at The Bushnell Performing Arts Center in Hartford, Connecticut
Named after local civic visionary Horace Bushnell, The Bushnell Performing Arts Center opened as Bushnell Memorial Hall in 1930, less than two years after the groundbreaking ceremony, and was fully restored in 2005 for its 75th anniversary. Known as a presenting center (because all sets and costumes are brought in for each show), The Bushnell is home to the 2,799 seat Mortensen Hall, the 907 seat Belding Hall, which opened in 2001, and several small halls and suites for concerts, lectures, weddings, corporate events, and performances.
Playing “I Spy” at Carnegie Hall
The finest acoustics concert hall in the world, Carnegie Hall is home to over 250 seasonal concerts and an additional 500+ independently produced events every year. It’s not considered an opera hall (no operas are performed) nor is it a performance center (no ballets or Broadway shows- find out by playing I Spy below), but Carnegie Hall does offer world class concerts featuring every genre of music and spoken word. During the late nineteenth century Concert Halls were quite popular, as places to listen to a concert, as opposed to theaters, which were places to watch a performance.
Boston Symphony Orchestra in Boston, Massachusetts
Founded by Henry Lee Higginson, the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) was first located at the site of the current Orpheum Theater and then moved to its current location in 1900. Higginson spent significant time studying European orchestras before creating the BSO in 1881 and the Boston Pops in 1885. Higginson wanted to mimic the Coliseum in Greece, as Boston was considered the Greek “Athens” of America, and included 16 Greek statues of figures related to the arts around the hall.
Rockefeller Center Tour & Top of the Rock in New York City
Funded by namesake John D. Rockefeller Jr., son of the founder of Standard Oil and the world’s first billionaire, Rockefeller Center is comprised of 19 different buildings built during the 1930s during the height of the Great Depression. It’s known as a “City within a City” because of its size and encompassing buildings and businesses. The most well known and most recognizable building, 30 Rock, now known as the Comcast Building, was built in 1930 and became a National Historic Landmark in 1987. Seventy stories tall, NBC owns 27 floors and has programming including all four hours of the Today Show, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Saturday Night Live and several other popular NBC shows housed in the building. The building looks out over 8 million people and 29,000 acres of land. Guests can take tours of the complex and also explore the three highest floors of the complex (called Top of the Rock) through a separate, or combined, ticket.
Radio City Music Hall Backstage Tour in New York City
Radio City Music Hall was the largest theater in the world at the time it opened in December of 1932. With a seating capacity of 5,931 guests (over 6,000 when they used the orchestra area for additional seating) and a stage that spans 130 feet across, it’s one of the largest, and most recognizable, entertainment venues in the world. Radio City Music Hall hosts hundreds of events each year and is home to the famous Rockettes (who were actually founded in St Louis Missouri in 1925, when Radio City Music Hall founder Roxy Rothafel brought them to New York City). Today, guests can see performances in music, theater, comedy, and sports 365 days a year, with over two million annual visitors. The Hall also offers daily Backstage tours with a behinds the scene look at how it all comes together.
7 Stops on the Tour of the Massachusetts State House
Located in downtown Boston, on the south side of Beacon Hill and overlooking the Boston Common and Back Bay, the Massachusetts State House was constructed in 1798 and served as the state house until the mid 1880s. The land where the capitol was built was donated by John Hancock, the first elected governor of Massachusetts and the building remains the oldest on Beacon Hill.