Completed in 1907 at a a cost of 450,000, the St. Paul Auditorium was located downtown between West Fifth and West Fourth Streets on the far side of Rice Park. Designed by architects, Charles Reed and Allen Stern, the West Fourth Street side had a 2nd, 3rd and 4th level rows of windows. The West Fifth Street side had a tall vertical sign that read “Auditorium.” The same year the building opened it hosted an enormous banquet for the ten Secretary of War and later president William Howard Taft. The St. Paul Auditorium, also known as Stern Hall was razed in 1982 to make way for the Ordway Theatre. A Skinner Pipe organ, installed in 1921, was salvaged, and moved across the country and restored for use in Boston’s historic Old South Church.
