Music: Aeolian Hall Sold

The Schulte Cigar Stores Co., runner-up of the omnipresent, ubiquitous United chain, has invaded the musical field. It has bought Aeolian Hall, Manhattan’s most delightful first-rank concert auditorium. With the hall itself goes the entire 17-story skyscraper structure, extending clear across from 42nd to 43rd Street, complete with pipe organ, radio station and numerous offices for concert managers, retired business men who wish to retain dignified New York business offices, and Christian Science practitioners.

The Aeolian Co., however, will remain in charge of the site for five additional years, until May 1, 1929. What will happen then, no one knows . . . one may imagine a super-cigar store.

For twelve years the present hall has been the scene of much musical historymaking. In 1911 the Aeolian Co. bought the West Presbyterian church and pulled it down. Aeolian Hall, then the highest structure in the vicinity, was erected on the spot. Somewhat smaller than Carnegie, it offered ideal stamping-ground for those more intimate, less thunderous artists and bands, whose tiny tunes wandered faintly and dejectedly and sometimes lost their way completely in the vast hollow spaces of the Hippodrome.

It was opened in September, 1912, with a New York Symphony concert under the baton of Walter Damrosch, featuring Dame Maggie Teyte as soloist. Since then, practically every artist of . international repute, from Ignace Paderewski to “Jerry” Farrar, has appeared on its platform. The concert-entrance is on 43rd Street, the Aeolian business entrance on 42nd Street. Thus the tainted atmosphere of commercialism was never permitted to invade the sanctum of Art. Now and then, free player-piano and player-organ concerts were given of a forenoon when no orchestra was rehearsing, but these, being free, were not too well attended. The sale of the Hall, at a figure estimated at around $6,000,000, is seen as a harbinger of another northward hop.