Thorne Hall

Thorne Hall is the main auditorium at Occidental College, on the Eagle Rock campus in northeast Los Angeles, between Pasadena to the east and Glendale to the west. The college's street address is 1600 Campus Rd, and the hall stands at the top of the Quad with Thorne Road running behind it. It was completed in 1938 as the last major campus design by architect Myron Hunt, and it carries the full name Belle Wilber Thorne Hall, after the late wife of trustee Charles Thorne, who paid for it. The college put the building on its centennial seal, and it's the one you see on postcards: cream walls, four columns and a red tile roof above a wide run of steps.

It isn't a nightclub, and the calendar reads like a college's. The Occidental Symphony Orchestra plays its fall and spring concerts here, the Oxy Live! series brings writers and artists in for a conversation on stage, and the Hume Fellowship concert each year hands the room to a visiting artist. Past Hume Fellows include Esperanza Spalding, Dame Evelyn Glennie and Vijay Iyer. The hall also hosts Convocation, Dance Production and Apollo Night, the campus talent show, and the college lists Martin Luther King Jr. and Marian Anderson among the people who have appeared on its stage. The college's own history of the building notes that trustee Elizabeth Clapp McBride and her husband gave it an Aeolian-Skinner organ with four manual keyboards.

Many of these events are free with a reserved ticket, and the popular ones waitlist, so reserve early through the link on the event page. For driving, enter the campus from Campus Road at Bird Road and turn left onto Gilman Road. The closest lot is the first one off Bird Road by Booth Hall, and there's a parking garage off Gilman Road. Accessible parking is on Bird Road or on Thorne Road behind the hall. Campus parking rules help an evening visitor: visitor spaces need no permit between 8 AM and 8 PM, and the general lots are only enforced on weekdays from 8 to 5, so a 7:30 PM concert is a simple park and walk.