English: Built in 1931, this Classical Revival and Art Deco-style building was designed by Walker and Weeks to house the renowned Cleveland Orchestra. Severance Hall is named for John L. Severance, and his wife, Elisabeth Huntingdon DeWitt Severance, whom made their money as trustees of Standard Oil, and funded the construction of the building. The building is wedge-shaped with an octagonal southwest section housing the lobby, and a fan-shaped northeast section, housing the auditorium. The building is sited on a knoll overlooking Wade Lagoon in Wade Park at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East Boulevard in Cleveland’s University Circle neighborhood, and features landscaped grounds with planting beds, trees, and a front terrace.

The building is clad in limestone with a Classical Revival-style exterior, featuring a front facade with a two-story ionic portico on the second and third floors below a pediment, a large Palladian window at the rear of the portico, decorative sculptural reliefs, and decorative window surrounds, with ionic pilasters on the side facades, cartouches, pediments, and festoons, entrances to the ground floor on the side facades that open into elliptical vestibules and feature aluminum doors and cartouches above, with other areas of the building featuring stone balustrades, ornamental metal lampposts and light fixtures, window hoods with brackets, and elliptical oxeye windows.

Inside, the building’s ground floor common areas have a more distinctly Art Deco appearance, with terrazzo floors, marble wall cladding and columns, original elevators with wooden paneling, velvet upholstered bench seats, aluminum trim, and original operating knobs, aluminum trim and doors throughout the interior, aluminum railings at the marble staircases, Art Deco wall sconces, recessed water fountains, marble ionic pilasters, and the remains of a former automobile drive-through on the ground floor. The elliptical Bogomolny-Kozerefski Grand Foyer, the lobby for the main auditorium, is a mix of Classical Revival and Art Deco elements in a two-story space on the first and second floors, which features fluted red marble composite columns with gilded capitals, gilded trim, an ornate terrazzo floors, torchiere-style light fixtures, mural panels depicting the history of music, decorative chandeliers, grand staircases, a second-story balcony, and niches at the staircase landings. The Reinberger Chamber Hall on the ground floor features a Classical Revival design with wall murals, wooden paneling, a heavily decorated ceiling, a stage with a proscenium arch that resembles curtains, velvet upholstered seats, candelabra-style wall sconces, and accessible box seats in the rear with arched openings. The main auditorium, the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Concert Hall, is of an ornate Art Deco design with some classical flourishes, and features an ornate ceiling with silver leaf elements, a mix of floral and geometric motifs, boxes on either side of the stage with fluted trim surrounds, a banded proscenium arch, a neotraditional 21st Century band shell that mimics the details of the historic auditorium, balconies with decorative details at their edges, silver details resembling ferns that appear to drip down the walls from the ceiling to the wooden and aluminum paneling on the lower portion of the walls at the rear of the balconies, and a ribbed ceiling.

The building was renovated in 1970 with the removal of the ground floor automobile drive, and was later extensively renovated and expanded in 1998-2000 under the direction of architect David M. Schwarz, renovating the ground floor, adding the present band shell, restoring original character-defining features, updating building systems, and adding a staircase to an adjacent underground parking garage. The building today continues to house the Cleveland Orchestra, considered by critics to be one of the best orchestras in the world, and one of the most prominent orchestras in the United States. The building today hosts not just the Cleveland Orchestra, but other events including concerts, lectures, performances, and the venue for the commencement of Case Western Reserve University.