Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street.
Built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1890, it is one of the most famous venues in the USA for classical music and popular music, renowned for its beauty, history and acoustics. Carnegie Hall has its own artistic programming, development, and marketing departments and presents about 100 performances each season; it is also rented out to performing groups. It has no resident company, although the New York Philharmonic was officially resident there until 1962.
Carnegie Hall is also the name of the 'original' hall in Dunfermline, Scotland. This hall was also financed by Andrew Carnegie as Dunfermline was his birthplace, but is much smaller and less famous.

Performing arts venues
Carnegie Hall's main auditorium seats 2,804 on five levels. It was named for the violinist Isaac Stern in 1997.
The Main Hall is admired for its warm, live acoustics and it is commonplace for critics to express regret that the New York Philharmonic plays at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center and not in its former home in Carnegie Hall. "It has been said that the hall itself is an instrument," the late Isaac Stern once remarked. "It takes what you do and makes it larger than life."

The Main Hall

Zankel Hall, which seats 599, is named for Judy and Arthur Zankel. Originally called simply "Recital Hall," this was the first auditorium to open to the public in April, 1891. Following renovations made in 1896, it was renamed Carnegie Lyceum. It was leased to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1898, converted to a cinema around 1959, and was reclaimed to be used as an auditorium in 1997. The newly reconstructed hall opened in September 2003. Because of its location below street level, passing subways can be heard through the walls.
Weill Recital Hall, which seats 268, is named for Sanford I. Weill, the chairman of Carnegie Hall's board, and his wife Joan. This auditorium, in use since the hall opened in 1891, was originally called "Chamber Music Hall" (later Carnegie Chamber Music Hall); the name was changed to Carnegie Recital Hall in the late 1940s, and finally became Weill Recital Hall in 1986. The smaller halls
The building also contains the Carnegie Hall Archives, established in 1986, and the Rose Museum, which opened in 1991. Studios above the Hall contain working spaces for The Artists of Carnegie Hall, a community of artists in the performing and graphic arts including music, drama, dance, as well as architects, playrights, literary agents, photograhers, and painters.

Other facilities
Carnegie Hall was designed in a revivalist brick and brownstone Italian Renaissance style by William Tuthill, an amateur cellist who was a member of the board of the Oratorio Society of New York along with Carnegie. Richard Morris Hunt and Dankmar Adler aided as consultants.
Carnegie Hall is one of the last large buildings in New York built entirely of masonry, without a steel frame; however, when several flights of studio spaces were added to the building near the turn of the 20th century, a steel framework was erected around segments of the building. The exterior is rendered in narrow "Roman" bricks of a mellow ochre hue, with details in terracotta and brownstone. The foyer avoids contemporary Baroque theatrics with a high-minded exercise in the Florentine Renaissance manner of Filippo Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel: white plaster and gray stone form a harmonious system of round-headed arched openings and Corinthian pilasters that support an unbroken cornice, with round-headed lunettes above it, under a vaulted ceiling. The famous white and gold interior is similarly restrained.

Architecture
Carnegie Hall is named after Andrew Carnegie, who paid for its construction. It was intended as a venue for the Oratorio Society of New York and the New York Symphony Society, on whose boards Carnegie served. Construction began in 1890, and was carried out by Isaac A. Hopper and Company. Although the building was in use from April 1891, the official opening night was on May 5, with a concert conducted by maestro Walter Damrosch and composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Originally known simply as "Music Hall" (the words "Music Hall founded by Andrew Carnegie" still appear on the façade above the marquee), the hall was renamed Carnegie Hall in 1893 after board members of the Music Hall Company of New York (the hall's original governing body) persuaded Carnegie to allow the use of his name. Several alterations were made to the building between 1893 and 1896, including the addition of two towers of artists' studios, and alterations to the auditorium on the building's lower level.
The hall was owned by the Carnegie family until 1925, when Carnegie's widow sold it to a real estate developer, Robert E. Simon. When Simon died in 1935, his son, Robert E. Simon Jr. took over. By the mid-1950s, changes in the music business prompted Simon to offer Carnegie Hall for sale to the New York Philharmonic, which booked a majority of the hall's concert dates each year. The orchestra declined, since they planned to move to Lincoln Center, then in the early stages of planning. At the time, it was widely believed that New York City could not support two major concert venues. Facing the loss of the hall's primary tenant, Simon was forced to offer the building for sale. A deal with a commercial developer fell through, and by 1960, with the New York Philharmonic on the move to Lincoln Center, the building was slated for demolition to make way for a commercial skyscraper. Under pressure from a group led by violinist Isaac Stern and many of the artist residents, special legislation was passed that allowed the city of New York to buy the site from Simon for $5 million, and in May of 1960 the nonprofit Carnegie Hall Corporation was created to run the venue. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962.

Renovations and additions
The Executive and Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall (from July 2005) is Sir Clive Gillinson, formerly managing director of the London Symphony Orchestra.

Management
Unexpectedly, for most concert-goers, it emerged in 1986 that Carnegie Hall had never consistently maintained an archive. Without a central repository, a significant portion of Carnegie Hall's documented history had been dispersed. In preparation for the celebration of Carnegie Hall's centennial (1991), the Carnegie Hall Archives was established. Advertisements and stories in the media about how Carnegie Hall was scouring basements and attics to recover its history elicited an overwhelming response from the public, who had been keeping their old programs: artifacts began arriving from all over the world. Vast amounts of material, including over 12,000 programs, have been recovered, enabling the Archives to document much of Carnegie Hall's history.

The Carnegie Hall Archives

Symphony No. 9, opus 95, "From the New World" by Antonín Dvořák - December 16, 1893, New York Philharmonic, Anton Seidl conducting
Sinfonia Domestica by Richard Strauss - March 21, 1904, Richard Strauss conducting
Concerto in F by George Gershwin - December 3, 1925, New York Symphony Orchestra, George Gershwin, piano, Walter Damrosch conducting
An American in Paris by George Gershwin - December 13, 1928, New York Philharmonic, Walter Damrosch conducting
Variations on a Theme of Corelli by Sergei Rachmaninoff - November 7, 1931, Sergei Rachmaninoff, piano
Density 21.5 by Edgard Varèse - February 16, 1936, Georges Barrère, flute
Contrasts by Béla Bartók - January 9, 1939, Benny Goodman, clarinet, Joseph Szigeti, violin, and Endre Petri, piano
Chamber Symphony No. 2 op. 38 by Arnold Schoenberg - December 15, 1940, New Friends of Music, Fritz Stiedry conducting
New World A-Comin' by Duke Ellington - December 11, 1943, Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Weber by Paul Hindemith - January 20, 1944, New York Philharmonic, Artur Rodziński conducting
Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte for Voice and Piano Quintet, op. 41 - November 23, 1944, New York Philharmonic, Artur Rodziński conducting
Symphony in Three Movements by Igor Stravinsky - January 24, 1946, New York Philharmonic, Igor Stravinsky conducting
Ebony Concerto by Igor Stravinsky - March 25, 1946, Woody Herman and His Orchestra, Walter Hendl conducting
Symphony No. 3, "The Camp Meeting" by Charles Ives - April 5, 1946, New York Little Symphony, Lou Harrison conducting, in Carnegie Chamber Music Hall (now known as Weill Recital Hall)
Hymne pour grande orchestra (Hymne au Saint Sacrament) by Olivier Messiaen - March 13, 1947, New York Philharmonic, Leopold Stokowski conducting
Symphony No. 2 by Charles Ives - February 22, 1951, New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein conducting
Symphony No. 4 by Charles Ives - April 26, 1965, American Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting
Evocations for Orchestra by Carl Ruggles - February 2, 1971, National Orchestral Association, John Perras conducting
Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra by John Corigliano - November 9, 1975, American Symphony Orchestra, Bert Lucarelli, oboe, Akiyama Kazuyoshi conducting
Piano Concerto No. 1 by Milton Babbitt - January 19, 1986, American Composers Orchestra, Alan Feinberg, piano, Charles Wuorinen conducting
Concerto #1 by Gregory Magarshak - 1991, Manhattan Symphony Orchestra, Peter Tiboris conducting
Symphony No. 6 "Plutonian Ode" for soprano and orchestra by Philip Glass, text by Allen Ginsberg - February 3, 2002, American Composers Orchestra, Lauren Flanigan, soprano, Dennis Russell Davies conducting
American Berserk by John Coolidge Adams - February 25, 2002, Garrick Ohlsson, piano
Women at an Exhibition for chamber orchestra, electronics, and video by Randall Woolf - November 17, 2004, American Composers Orchestra, Steven Sloane conducting, video by Mary Harron and John C. Walsh
"Between Hills Briefly Green" performed by Vermont Youth Orchestra. Conducted by Troy Peters. September 2004
Algunas metáforas que aluden al tormento, a la angustia y a la Guerra for percussion quartet and chamber orchestra - January 21, 2005, American Composers Orchestra and So Percussion, Steven Sloane conducting
Traps Relaxed by Dan Trueman - January 21, 2005, American Composers Orchestra, Dan Trueman, electronic violin and laptop, Steven Sloane conducting
Glimmer by Jason Freeman - January 21, 2005, American Composers Orchestra, Steven Sloane conducting
Concerto for Winds "Some Other Blues" by Daniel Schnyder - February 8, 2005, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
Requiem by Steven Edwards - November 20, 2006
Catenaires by Elliott Carter - December 11, 2006, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano (composer present at premiere)
Antworte by TaQ - March 11, 2007, New York Symphonic Ensemble, Mamoru Takahara conducting Location and folklore

List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City
List of major concert halls
Judy at Carnegie Hall