July 4. 2024. Paul Goldfinger photo. The Great Auditorium during the Imperial Brass concert. Few attendees choose to sit there. Click once to enlarge.
The view as seen from the high reaches of the Auditorium. 7/4/24. Paul Goldfinger photo.
Paul Goldfinger, MD, Editor, Blogfinger.net
Ted Bell once told me that the best place to hear music in the Auditorium was up in the back. I love to go there with my camera because there are all sorts of interesting people who choose to sit there.
And there is fresh air, tenters peeking in through the open doors, and freedom to move around, like this Mom’s chasing her daughter here and there.
The 3 authors of The Great Auditorium—Ocean Grove’s Architectural Treasure completed their iconic book in 2012. They are Wayne T. Bell, Cindy L. Bell, and Darrell A. Dufresne, all Grovers.
I saw Cindy during the Imperial Brass concert on July 4, 2024. She was up in the back, and I have seen her there before, but not when she is conducting during the Choir Festival.
As we all marvel at the construction of this remarkable building, completed in 90 days out of wood and steel by ship builders, consider this quote by Rev. Dr. Elwood Stokes when dedicating the new Auditorium on Sunday, July 1, 1894, which the authors share on the opening page of their book:
“The glory of this latter house shall be greater than the former, saith the Lord of hosts,”
“Haggai 2:9.” from about 580 BCE in the Old Testament when the prophet predicted the construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.
The original Solomon’s Temple, built in 1000 BCE, was destroyed in 586 BCE when the Babylonians invaded the State of Israel, and the Jewish population was taken back to Babylon. It was the first diaspora.
The Persians freed them in 538 BCE , and most went back to Jerusalem.
The Haggai prophecy resulted in the Second Temple’s being built in 500 BCE. It was a marvel which survived until the Romans destroyed it in 62 AD.
Just as the Christian founders of Ocean Grove in 1894 needed a new building for prayer, so did the Jews of 515 BCE, and Stokes recognized the biblical similarity to the Grove’s magnificent new Auditorium.
Here is a link to an original recording made in the Great Auditorium over 100 years ago.
The Auditorium was built by a regular New York construction company which had nothing to do with shipbuilding. This has long been a local legend because the wooden ceiling was curved.