Inside the Hult Center, Downtown Eugene's Living Room for the Performing Arts
On Willamette Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, the Hult Center for the Performing Arts has anchored Eugene's cultural life since 1982 — two halls, one unmistakable roofline, and a city's worth of first concerts.
Some buildings you navigate by; the Hult Center is one you feel. Its angular, glowing form on Willamette Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, photographed here at night, has marked the center of Eugene's cultural map since it was completed in 1982. The Hult Center for the Performing Arts is owned by the City of Eugene and operated by the city's Cultural Services Division — which makes it, in the most literal sense, the public's theater.
The money tells the founding story. Eugene voters approved the funds in 1978, and the Hult Center rose as part of the same downtown urban renewal project as the neighboring conference center hotel. A city voting to tax itself for a concert hall is a statement of values, and Eugene has been living inside that statement ever since — through first symphonies, school recitals, touring Broadway productions and graduation ceremonies beyond counting.
Inside are two very different rooms. The Silva Concert Hall seats 2,448 and serves as the city's grand stage, home to large-scale music, dance and touring productions. The Soreng Theater, at 498 seats, is the intimate counterweight — the room for chamber work, lectures, comedy and performances that gain power from closeness. A smaller studio space rounds out the building. Resident companies, commercial promoters and local performing arts groups all pass through the same stage doors.
What the Hult means to Eugene is easiest to see in the lobby on a performance night: students in concert dress, couples who have held the same seats for decades, visitors who drove in from the coast or the valley, all sharing one civic room. Downtown restaurants time their seatings to its curtain times. Its calendar is, in effect, a second city calendar.
Eugene Track Town News will cover the Hult as a public asset, not just a listings page: the programming, the resident companies, the public money and the public art woven through the building. When the house lights go down on Willamette Street, a piece of Eugene's self-portrait lights up. We will be in the audience, taking notes.
