The building's base is approximately 150,000 square feet (14,000 m 2). Pei initially planned the tower to be 200 feet (61 m) high, but was forced to reduce it to 162 feet (49 m) due to the structure's proximity to Burke Lakefront Airport. Pei came up with the idea of a tower with a glass pyramid protruding from it. At one point in the planning phase, when a financing gap existed, planners proposed locating the Rock Hall in the then-vacant May Company Building but finally decided to commission architect I. Ultimately, the chosen location was along East Ninth Street in downtown by Lake Erie, east of Cleveland Stadium. Cleveland wanted it here and put up the money."ĭuring early discussions on where to build the Hall of Fame and Museum, the Foundation's board considered a site along the Cuyahoga River in downtown Cleveland. As The Plain Dealer music critic Michael Norman noted, "It was $65 million. Cleveland may also have been chosen as the organization's site because the city offered the best financial package. Author Peter Guralnick said the hall should have been located in Memphis in a 2016 interview. On May 5, 1986, the Hall of Fame Foundation chose Cleveland as the permanent home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Ĭleveland business leaders and media companies organized a petition demonstrating the city's support that was signed by 600,000 Northeast Ohio residents, and Cleveland ranked first in a 1986 USA Today poll asking where the Hall of Fame should be located. tour in the city, Bruce Springsteen, Roxy Music, and Rush among many others. during the 1970s and 1980s, including David Bowie, who began his first U.S. In addition, Cleveland cited radio station WMMS, which played a key role in breaking several major acts in the U.S. Freed was also a member of the hall of fame's inaugural class of inductees in 1986. Ĭleveland lobbied for the museum, with civic leaders in Cleveland pledging $65 million in public money to fund the construction, and citing that WJW disc jockey Alan Freed both coined the term " rock and roll" and heavily promoted the new genre-and that Cleveland was the location of Freed's Moondog Coronation Ball, often credited as the first major rock and roll concert. The search committee considered several cities, including Philadelphia (home of Bill Haley and American Bandstand), Memphis (home of Sun Studios and Stax Records), Detroit (home of Motown Records), Cincinnati (home of King Records), New York City, and Cleveland. The Foundation began inducting artists in 1986, but the Hall of Fame still had no home.
Wenner, record executives Seymour Stein, Bob Krasnow, and Noreen Woods, and attorneys Allen Grubman and Suzan Evans. The RRHOF Foundation was established in 1983 by Ahmet Ertegun, who assembled a team that included Rolling Stone publisher Jann S. 4.3 Ahmet Ertegun Award for Lifetime Achievement.1 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation.Pei designed the new museum, and it was dedicated on September 1, 1995. After a long search for the right city, Cleveland was chosen in 1986 as the Hall of Fame's permanent home. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation was established on April 20, 1983, by Ahmet Ertegun, founder and chairman of Atlantic Records. The museum documents the history of rock music and the artists, producers, engineers, and other notable figures who have influenced its development. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ( RRHOF), sometimes simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum and hall of fame located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States, on the shore of Lake Erie.