Your eyes meet the concert hall home to the Utah Symphony, adjacent to Temple Square and the Salt Palace on South Temple Street. This architectural landmark sits adjacent to Temple Square and the Salt Palace on South Temple Street and can hold up to 2,811 people. Recently it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2024.
The hall's story began when the Board of the Utah Symphony created a Design and Construction Committee including Maurice Abravanel, O.C. Tanner, and Jack Gallivan to advise an architectural team headed by Bob Fowler; construction took three years and $12 million. Abravanel Hall first opened in September 1979 as Symphony Hall, with a grand opening on September 14–15, 1979, when Stanisław Skrowaczewski guest conducted Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra and Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 4. In May 1993 the hall was renamed for Maurice Abravanel.
A 1998 expansion added wheelchair accessible restrooms, a new Ticket Office, and a new reception room, and the expanded facility hosted several events during the 2002 Olympics Arts. This hall has hosted the Utah Symphony since 1979; its façade sits quietly beside Temple Square and the Salt Palace you'll pass next.