Murphy Auditorium back as a venue for music, including CSO events

Though tucked away on the Near North Side, the Murphy Auditorium has served for nearly a century as a significant gathering space, albeit a private one in the past.

Its neighbor immediately to the west, the Driehaus Museum purchased the structure in 2022, and the institution is eager to reinvigorate the 400-seat auditorium and activate it as a space for its lectures and programs as well as concerts, meetings and events presented by visiting groups.

Lisa Key, the Driehaus’ executive director, sees offerings at the Murphy, especially those presented in collaboration with other Chicago organizations, as a significant way to lure new visitors to the museum.

“That’s my biggest goal: I want to build the awareness and invite people here,” said Key, former deputy director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

One of the Driehaus’ most important new partners at the Murphy is the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which will launch a series of chamber-music concerts in the space starting on April 8.    

“The space is beautiful, historic and intimate — all essential qualities for the presentation of chamber music,” said Randy Elliot, the CSO’s director of artistic administration.

Five CSO members — Mihaela Ionescu and Hermine Gagné, violins; Wei-Ting Kuo, viola; Richard Hirschl, cello, and Jennifer Gunn, flute and piccolo — will present a concert that features Philip Glass’ Quartet Satz, Beethoven’s Serenade for Flute, Violin and Viola in D Major, Op. 25, and George Whitefield Chadwick’s String Quartet No. 4 in E Minor.

The Driehaus reached out to CSO leaders about a possible collaboration after a CSO quartet performed at the reopening of the Murphy last June. “It sounded so good and invited so much thought,” Key said.

The CSO was receptive to the idea, and discussions between the two organizations have led to plans for additional concerts this coming summer and fall in the Murphy. “I consider the Driehaus Museum one of the many unique cultural icons and museums that this city has to offer,” Elliot said. “It also represents many historical aspects of the city. Upon the renovation of the Murphy Auditorium, it only made sense that the CSO become an artistic partner.”  

The April 8 program will celebrate Driehaus’ current exhibit, A Tale of Today: Materialities, which features site-specific works by more than 12 Midwestern artists. Guest curator Giovanni Aloi will present a short introduction to Materialities before the music begins, and attendees can use their concert ticket to return for free admission to the exhibit and the rest of the museum.

The Driehaus, at 50 E. Erie, occupies what was originally the Nickerson Mansion, an opulent 1883 Gilded-Age residence that replaced a home at the same location that was destroyed in the Chicago Fire. It was called the “Marble Palace,” and there is array of marble adornments on the interior as well as onyx, exotic woods, glazed tiles and stained glass.

The museum was founded by financier and philanthropist, Richard H. Driehaus and opened in June 2008. It houses decorative arts from the late 19th and early 20th-century objects by famed artists and workshops such as Louis Comfort Tiffany and the Wiener Werkstätte.

“We’re not a house museum,” Key said. “While we are a historic home, we don’t have the archives, we don’t have the connection to the founders. We are really a museum that is using those two historic spaces.”

Completed in 1926, the Murphy was built on what was a side yard of the Nickerson Mansion by the American College of Surgeons, which used the auditorium for meetings and educational activities. The building was named after John B. Murphy, a prominent clinical educator who was known for performing life-saving surgery on President Theodore Roosevelt after an assassination attempt in 1912.

Designated a Chicago landmark in May 2024, the Murphy was designed by Chicago architects Benjamin Marshall and Charles E. Fox of Marshall and Fox. The firm was also responsible for the Blackstone (1910) and Drake (1920) hotels and the Steger Building, a 19-story skyscraper completed in 1910 at 28 E. Jackson. The auditorium’s French Renaissance exterior, which is adorned with massive columns and a prominent pediment, is closely patterned after that of the Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Consolation (1900) in Paris.

The auditorium has a pair of cast-bronze doors designed by the Tiffany Studios at the front entrance with six panels depicting prominent figures in the history of medicine. A prominent stained-glass window inside the auditorium was created by the Philadelphia-based Willet Company, which later created windows for the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. The firm has since gone through several ownership changes and no longer has a studio in Philadelphia, but is still in business.

During a 2023 renovation of the building, the Driehaus made slight improvements to the auditorium, including leveling the main floor to improve the utility and accessibility of the space and adding new lighting. In addition, the museum overhauled the fifth and sixth floors above the auditorium, adding an art studio, seminar room, outdoor terrace and new offices

The next round of work in the auditorium will consist of adding sound dampening and an amplification system. “We’re going to make some improvements to the acoustics,” Key said. “It’s a very live space [meaning it has a long reverberation time]. So that’s Phase 2.” The Driehaus has consulted with Threshold, a Chicago-based acoustic and audio-visual design firm, which has provided recommendations for the space.

The auditorium is now open to the public during visiting hours of the Driehaus Museum, and visitors are encouraged to enter the complex through the auditorium and pass via a connecting passage into the main section of the museum. “We’re working on the interpretation of the space. How do we make it come alive for visitors?” Keys said of the Murphy.

In addition, the museum presents events in the auditorium three to four times a month, including lectures and film screenings. The Driehaus is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday to Sunday; Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., with free admission from 4 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday evenings. Every third Wednesday, it presents a free concert in the Murphy by a community group like the Chicago Youth Symphony.

As noted, Driehaus leaders are actively pursuing partnerships with local organizations like Chicago’s African American Museum of Performing Arts, for example, which held a public program in the Murphy in December. In addition, Apollo’s Fire, a Cleveland-based early-instrument ensemble with an annual concert series in Chicago, presented a Valentine’s Day performance in the Murphy.

“We partner with a lot of organizations by offering them the space and doing programs together,“ Key said. ”Then, those other organizations are inviting their audiences here — a lot of people who have never been here. So that’s been a really successful way for us to use this space to open up our audiences, too.”

Although additional dates have not yet been announced, more CSO chamber concerts will be happening soon in the Murphy. “We will strive to work together,” Elliot said, “to develop artistic presentations and concerts to the local community that showcase the cultural importance of the venue augmented by exceptional performances by CSO musicians.”