Urban critic: Geffen Hall Didn’t Need $500M Overhaul

Vulture’s Justin Davidson is “relieved” that Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic have pulled the plug on a “long-gestating and evercostlier plan” to basically gut David Geffen Hall and “insert an entirely new building” inside its shell. The price tag was “$500 million and rising fast” and would have kept the hall dark “for two years and lengthening.” Yes, the hall is “acoustically lackluster and visually charmless” — but does it really have “half a billion dollars’ worth of problems”? He suspects not and suggests a more modest renovation: “knocking out the upper balcony, cutting down the number of seats, moving the stage out into the room (as already happens for Mostly Mozart) and fitting out the interior with sound-diffusing finishes.”