The University Stages — DeBartolo and Its Predecessors

Notre Dame CDP, outside the city limits · Washington Hall 1881 · the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center opened September 2004

The boundary is stated first, as this record states it everywhere: the University of Notre Dame stands in the unincorporated Notre Dame CDP, outside South Bend's city limits, and its stages are carried here at boundary size because the city's playing life has used them for a century and a half — the Civic Theatre's borrowed rooms among them. The campus's historic stage is Washington Hall, completed in 1881, seating about 560 (the university magazine's figure; a campus-press figure of 571 also circulates) — the room where the university's own theatrical tradition, and Knute Rockne's undergraduate acting, belong to the Notre Dame record. Across the road, Saint Mary's College's O'Laughlin Auditorium in the Moreau Center for the Arts and its Little Theatre served the same borrowed-stage circuit for the city's companies; Saint Mary's stands in the same CDP, and its rooms print at the same boundary size.

The Marie P. DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts opened in September 2004 at the south end of the campus — the first new performance venue on the campus since Washington Hall, on the university's own framing. It was underwritten by Edward J. DeBartolo Sr.'s $33 million gift of 1989 and named for his wife; it was designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, with construction from September 2001. Its size is carried at 151,000 square feet in the university's news account and 150,000 in its magazine, and its cost at $64 million in the news account and $63.6 million in the magazine's; both pairs stand. Its five venues seat, as the center publishes them: the Judd and Mary Lou Leighton Concert Hall, 900; the Patricia George Decio Mainstage Theatre, 350; the Michael Browning Family Cinema, 200 — the first THX-certified cinema in Indiana; the Regis Philbin Studio Theatre, 100; and the Reyes Organ and Choral Hall, 80. The inaugural performance was Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in Leighton Hall on September 19, 2004, and the first season brought the Chieftains and the New York Philharmonic. The center's relation to the city's rooms is documented rather than rival: its three-season NDPresents initiative booked Morris performances for acts too large for DeBartolo, and the South Bend Symphony plays its chamber series there while its main series plays the Morris. The university stage and the city stage, on the record, are one circuit with a boundary line through it — the line printed, the circuit whole.

Sources

1. University of Notre Dame, ND News, September 2004 — the center's opening, its 151,000 square feet and $64 million figure, the DeBartolo gift and naming.
2. Notre Dame Magazine — the September 19, 2004 Marsalis inaugural, the first season, the 150,000-square-foot and $63.6 million figures, Washington Hall's 1881 date and 560 seats, the NDPresents course at the Morris.
3. DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, published seating charts — the five venues' capacities; the Browning Cinema's THX distinction.