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A Classic Look with Modern Structural Quality

Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall
Fort Worth, Texas

The Bass Performance Hall was named “One of the Top Ten Opera Houses in the World” by Travel and Leisure Magazine. The facility anchors the Performing Arts District in downtown Fort Worth.

The 2,056-seat performance hall is reminiscent of a classic European opera house, with a horseshoe configuration that has four levels of balconies. To maintain open lobby space, the lower balcony seating that cantilevers over the mezzanine seating does not have a back-span, so we developed a unique torque-tube concept to satisfy this condition. Despite the extremely complex structural geometry of the building, our initial estimate of the building’s steel tonnage was within 0.1 percent of the final tonnage.

Other striking features include the 80-foot-diameter Great Dome and two 48-foot-tall angels sculpted in Texas limestone that trumpet above the hall’s Fourth Street entrance.