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Furniture Factory Concerto. Whence comes this sudden surge of national enthusiasm? More education is one answer. Before World War 1, 20% of the 14-to 17-year-olds in the U.S. attended high school; in 1964 this has increased to 93.5%, of which 53% go on to college. Enrollment in U.S. colleges increased 102% between 1954 and 1964.
Prosperity is a major factor—and the leisure that prosperity has brought on a scale unknown to any other culture in the history of mankind. And once the trend began, it has been augmented by feedback from all the institutions that serve society. The universities have been reaching out more and more into the communities around them, staging lectures, recitals, plays and debates to which the public is invited. The foundations are handing out more and more money for cultural causes—an estimated $50 million this year. In 1964, for instance, the Rockefeller Foundation made grants to seven symphony orchestras to enable them to extend their seasons one or two weeks, and the Ford Foundation made grants to professional ballet companies from Salt Lake City to Boston.
U.S. business has turned patron in a big way, partly out of tax leniencies, partly out of a new sense of community responsibility. Last year U.S. business supported culture to the tune of $25 million and is expected to spend 10% more in 1964. Chase Manhattan Bank has a $500,000 collection of modern art and gives some $350,000 a year to educational and cultural projects. The Basic-Witz Furniture Co. of Waynesboro, Va., commissioned a concerto by Robert Evett for its 75th anniversary, and General Motors recently sent its employees 600,000 copies of two booklets: French Impressionism and Masterpieces from the Louvre.
Gown & Town. All this activity needs its housing, and it is getting it. Pity the U.S. architect without an art museum, a symphony hall, an auditorium or a theater on his drawing board—or better yet, the newest thing: a culture center. Many of them have been built by universities to serve both the student body and the civic community. Among the newest and most distinguished are those shown in the preceding color pages:
> Monticello College's $2,000,000 Hatheway Hall in Godfrey, Ill., combines physical culture with the other kind: a swimming pool and a gymnasium flank the 1,000-seat auditorium. Finished in October 1963, the "theatron," as it is called because of its steeply banked seats arranged Romanstyle around the central arena, is used for lectures and student activities of this small junior college for women, as well as for performances and civic affairs of the community.
> The University of Illinois' spectacular $8,350,000 Assembly Hall was financed by two bond issues, the interest on the bonds being paid out of student fees. Opened about a year and a half ago, the mushroom-shaped concrete structure has a capacity of 16,000 permanent seats. The university also plans a $14 million Max Abramovitz-designed center for performing arts with four diversified auditoriums for music, ballet and experimental theater.
> The Grady Gammage Auditorium on the campus of Arizona State University at Tempe is a tribute to the determination of the university's late president Grady Gammage that Arizona should have at least one public building by the late great Frank Lloyd Wright, who made the