Fifty years ago today, MIT’s fab­u­lous Kresge Audi­to­rium was ded­i­cated. The gala affair fea­tured fac­ulty in aca­d­e­mic robes and a pre­sen­ta­tion by K-Mart founder Sebas­t­ian Kresge. They must have known then that 50 years later, Saarinen’s one-of-a-kind audi­to­rium would still be counted among the most archi­tec­turally impor­tant build­ings ever built.

Under­scor­ing the event’s sig­nif­i­cance, MIT had com­mis­sioned com­poser Aaron Cop­land to write, in Copland’s words, a work that “makes a big noise.” His Can­ti­cle of Free­dom thus made its world debut at the hands of Klaus Liep­mann, the MIT Sym­phony Orches­tra, and sev­eral MIT choirs. Much as the auditorium’s geom­e­try was intended to intrigue MIT types, Copland’s piece was writ­ten with the Tech engi­neer in mind. The US Army Field Band writes: “Know­ing the lim­i­ta­tions of MIT’s non-professional cho­rus, Cop­land inten­tion­ally restricted the choral writ­ing to uni­son and two parts, yet spared none of his tal­ent for rhyth­mic com­plex­ity, offer­ing a score that chal­lenges the math­e­mat­i­cal skills of any gifted musician.”

Tech­nol­ogy Review ran a story about Kresge Audi­to­rium for its May issue, but it doesn’t men­tion the best accolade—however anecdotal—which would come sev­eral years after the ded­i­ca­tion. Don Hal­lock writes for the WGBH Reunion Archive:

In about 1960, the world famous (and infa­mously iras­ci­ble) archi­tect, Frank Lloyd Wright, gave one of his rare lec­tures at MIT’s Kresge Audi­to­rium. The pro­ceed­ings were tele­vised live by WGBH and fed down the line to a national audi­ence on NET [renamed "PBS" in 1970 --sj] as well. Recently com­pleted, the Kresge build­ing, which had been designed by renowned Finnish archi­tect Eero Saari­nen, stood on a broad grassy field just behind the Chan­nel 2 stu­dio build­ing [now the site of W20 --sj]. Inside was a large, airy facil­ity, ‘Scan­dana­vian mod­ern,’ with a warmly com­fort­able inte­rior of nat­ural woods, all housed beneath the span of a grace­ful, low con­crete dome. From the out­side, the viewer was imme­di­ately struck by the real­iza­tion that the great dome itself was bal­anced ele­gantly on three small, symmetrically-spaced cor­ner points. The soar­ing, open sides were solid glass, and the edi­fice was, to say the least, MIT’s pride and joy.

Hav­ing fin­ished the body of his talk, Mr. Wright agreed to enter­tain ques­tions from the packed audi­ence. About half way through the exchange an eager young stu­dent rose and asked, “Mr. Wright, what do you think of Mr. Saarinen’s beau­ti­ful auditorium?”

Wright, with­out a moment’s pause, fixed the stu­dent with a pen­e­trat­ing stare and replied, “I try not to.”