RRC Blog

From greenhouse to world-class concert venue, “The Hall” has hosted countless students, Curtis faculty members, guest artists, and their audiences.

For over 40 years the Hall was open only to Curtis students and faculty. Audiences were first invited to attend recitals under the directorship of Rudolf Serkin (1968–1976).

      An avid patron of the arts, Mary Louise Curtis Bok’s most enduring contribution was the establishment of the Curtis Institute of Music

A philanthropist with a passion

Mary Louise Curtis Bok (1876–1970) was the only child of Cyrus H.K. Curtis (1850–1933), founder of the Curtis Publishing Company, and Louisa Knapp Curtis (1852–1910), editor of the Ladies Home Journal (published by the Curtis Publishing Company).

Curtis recently celebrated its first Community Day on September 29, a student activities day organized by staff and faculty to celebrate the diversity and history of the Curtis community. The day centered around the themes of community, identity, and celebration and included talks about the founding of Curtis, a tribute to Curtis stalwart Eleanor Sokoloff, and alumni remembrances of Curtis past. Current students participated in small-group breakout sessions to process their connections to these themes and remembrances in light of their experiences of Curtis in the present. In between these two large-group video conference meetings, students had time to explore the themes on their own using resources provided on a library guide (https://libguides.curtis.edu/communityday). 

Since it’s creation in 1996, The Internet Archive (IA) at archive.org has been, well...archiving the internet. It might sound like an impossible feat: collecting data from billions of websites, preserving their information, design, and sometimes functionality. However, this is exactly what has been accomplished. The Internet Archive stores roughly 330 billion webpages as well as digital collections of books, audio, video, images, games, and software programs.  One personal favorite is the Software Library’s collection of playable 80s-90s video games, such as the Oregon Trail*, PacMan, and Donkey Kong.

When the Curtis Institute opened its doors on Monday, October 13, 1924, its original buildings looked very much as they do now.

Yet they were also very different. Orchestra rehearsals were held in the Common Room, and recitals took place in an “Assembly Room” for lack of a proper concert hall. The school did not yet have a library, and there was a preparatory department in the building at 1720 Locust Street, where the present library is housed. During its early years in the 1920s, the school remodeled its buildings, developed its program, and established its legacy.