Carnegie Hall is one of the most significant venues for classical as well as popular music in the United States, known not just for its beauty and history but also for its fine acoustics. The hall is actually made up of three distinct structures and presents a fairly confusing internal structure. There are three auditoriums: the Main Hall, the Recital Hall and the Chamber Music Hall.
The Main Hall can currently hold an audience of 2,804 in five levels of seating, and is officially called the Isaac Stern Auditorium. It is greatly 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 is enormously tall, and visitors to the top balcony must climb 105 steps. All but the top level can be reached by elevator. Most of the greatest performers of classical music since the time the hall was built have performed in the Main Hall, and its lobbies are adorned with signed portraits and memorabilia.
The two smaller halls, now named the Judy and Arthur Zankel Hall and the Joan and Sanford L. Weill Recital Hall, seat 650 and 268 people respectively. Zankel Hall had been leased to the AADA in 1898, converted to a cinema around 1959. It was reclaimed to be used as an auditorium in 1997 and opened in September 2003. The site also contains the Rose Museum and the Carnegie Hall Archives, both relatively recent additions.
