Music Temple

Four columns wide across the front page of Publisher Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis' Public Ledger was spread the preliminary design for the fac,ade of the latest Curtis benefaction to Philadelphia: a $4,000,000 civic cultural center for opera, symphony, drama. Already, the accompanying announcement read, a site had been purchased by Publisher Curtis at a cost of $2,000,000: practically the whole of a city block located opposite the Academy of Natural Sciences.

Foremost in drawing up the plans was the late Edward William Bok (TIME, Jan. 20) editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, son-in-law of Publisher Curtis, who bequeathed $850,000 to the center. William Curtis Bok, his son, is heading a corporation which will manage the Curtis center on a non-profit basis. The finished edifice will house: an auditorium seating 4,000, for use by the Philadelphia orchestra, the Philadelphia Grand Opera company, the Philadelphia forum; a civic theatre seating 1,500; a "junior auditorium" seating 600, for recitals, lectures, rehearsals and "meetings of an intimate nature."

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