It has seen the likes of Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy and Herbie Hancock, but before some of America’s most influential men took to the stage, Tuckerman Hall was all about Worcester’s women.
The year was 1880 and the women of Worcester were celebrating the 30-year anniversary of the first National Woman’s Convention that just so happened to be held in the heart of the commonwealth. It was then that the Worcester Woman’s Club (yes, Woman’s) was created.
There was only one thing missing — the group needed a home. And at the turn of the 20th century, Stephen Salisbury III of Worcester’s most prominent family donated a parcel of land, the site of Tuckerman Hall at Tuckerman and Salisbury streets.
Designed by Josephine Wright Chapman, the hall was built in 1902, earning Chapman the title of one of America’s first female architects.
“The story of Josephine Wright Chapman really hasn’t been told yet,” said Paul Levenson, executive director of the Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra and Tuckerman Hall. “She was quite outspoken, life really wasn’t easy for her, but she was incredibly clever.”
Born in 1867, the Fitchburg native began her career at 24, working in the office of Clarence Backall in Boston. The firm was involved in the design of several buildings in downtown Boston, including the Colonial Theater, Wilbur Theatre and the Copley Plaza Hotel.
“It was a radical step for a Boston woman twenty years ago,” a 1914 article published in The Ladies Home Journal said. “And Miss Chapman’s family ignored her suggestions that she wished to become an architect, ridiculed her, and finally flatly opposed her. When it came to that she pawned her jewelry, even some of her clothes, in order to give herself a working fund; then she walked out of the house and went to work.”
By the late 1890s, Chapman once again broke through the glass ceiling and opened her own architectural firm, using Grundmann Studios, a woman’s art collective, as her base.
Ironically, Chapman herself shared many of the same negative feelings against female architects and their seriousness within the industry and said, “Many saw architecture merely as a pastime before marriage.”
By 1912, explained Linda Reeder, an architect and author of “The Architectress,” Chapman stopped hiring women altogether, citing a number of reasons from women’s motivations to the physical strength of men over women.
Despite her refusal to hire women, Chapman continued to give advice to women hoping to enter architecture, and recommended women begin by learning to use a typewriter, which was crucial to landing a worthwhile apprenticeship.
Before taking on Tuckerman Hall, Chapman designed Craigie Arms, a private dormitory for Harvard University, which has been renamed Chapman Arms in her honor. Chapman would go on to design a number of well-known buildings that have stood the test of time, including Boston’s Winthrop Building, the New Century Building on Huntington Avenue in Boston and the Hillandale in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
Back in Worcester, Tuckerman Hall remains one of Chapman’s greatest neoclassical works and is now home to the Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra.
Tuckerman Hall opened to the public on Oct. 6, 1902. Worcester Magazine wrote about the building’s debut and said, “No public building in this city can vie with it in the richness and splendor of its adornments, and far larger cities can show very little that surpasses them.
“No traveler, from near or far, will hesitate to pronounce the clubhouse not only unique, but strikingly beautiful, a tribute alike to the woman who designed and the women who accepted,” the article continued.
“The plot of land isn’t just a triangle,” said Levenson. “But an irregular triangle, so she had a lot of things to work through. It would be a challenge for any architect to build a hall with two auditoriums, on a sloping site, with the general structure in an irregular triangle.”
Standing in the center of the main hall, Levenson explained the room appears symmetrical but in fact is not. He pointed to a sconce situated in what appears to be slightly off-center to the left but actually marks the center of the room.
“There are no bad seats here,” he added with a chuckle. “Josephine was really a genius, the proof is in the pudding.”
And Levenson knows the hall like the back of his hand. He grew up within these walls and his father, Harry Levenson, spent nearly a half century behind the conductor’s stand with the orchestra.
“I graduated from college and two days later I was running things,” Levenson said, taking over from his father in the 1980s.
“My fingerprints are all over this place” he said.
At the same time, Levenson took a job as a lawyer in Boston and worked in corporate law for more than two decades, while also having a heavy hand in the hall’s operations.
“After 24 years as a lawyer I had a choice. I could walk away from the hall, or I could dive right in,” he said with a laugh. “So I thought, let’s give this thing a whirl, and that was 19 years ago.”
Before the Symphony moved in, the Worcester Woman’s Club called the hall home. Down the street, Mechanics Hall had already begun welcoming audiences into its halls when Tuckerman Hall was built. Instead of competition, the two organizations complemented one another with events, performances and meeting space.
“In the 1970s, women really had really entered the workforce, they were working and had less time for things like social clubs,” Levenson said.
In 1980, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places, before the Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra took up residence in 1981. In the late ’90s Worcester saw a revitalization, which included a $1.5 million restoration of Tuckerman Hall.
“We’ve really been restoring the hall since 1999,” Levenson said, adding one of the most rewarding parts of his job is being able to have seen what once was and the progress made under his watch.
In 2000, the building was declared an official project of Save America’s Treasures and between 2004 and 2005, another phase of restoration took place, including replacing the hall’s 125 windows.
A third and fourth phase of restoration took place between 2013 and 2023, including renovations to the building’s kitchens, air conditioning, heating and fire alarm systems.
One of the most recent projects involved renovating a space in the lower level of the building, transforming what was a bare cement room into a one-of-a-kind music library containing 1,300 pieces of music. Standing in the library, the only remnants of the former ruined room are the bright red bricks of the original wall, peeking in from the fireplace.
“This place is an oasis,” Levenson said. “I want anyone who walks through the door to forget their problems and be transported to another time and place, a different way of existing.”
Now the building is a reminder of the opulence and glory of Chapman’s work.
Steve Thomas from “This Old House” agrees. Speaking at the annual Preservation Worcester Meeting in 2006, Levenson said Thomas called the hall “one of the finest neoclassical restorations he’s ever seen.”
When Philippe de Montebello, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York visited Worcester, he and his wife stopped by the hall.
“His wife walked inside and said that this was one of the most beautiful buildings she’d ever been inside in her entire life,” Levenson said.
“That validation is everything,” he continued. “To be part of beautiful celebrations, it is so rewarding. The afterglow sticks with you, it’s a real high.”
The hall has been offering weddings for the last quarter century, something Levenson said he doesn’t take for granted. In fact, he was a wedding guest a few weeks ago and sat in the pews, notebook in hand, ready to take notes.
“I never take a back seat to anyone’s wedding,” he said with a laugh, adding he understands every single event the hall hosts is “someone’s big deal and that’s exactly how we treat everyone that walks through that door.”
T&G engagement editor Sarah Barnacle is getting to know Central Mass. by exploring some of the best places to go and things to do in Worcester County. If you have an idea or suggestion, please email sbarnacle@gannett.com.
