The A.A. Harding Band Building, located on the UIUC campus at 1103 S. Sixth St. in Champaign, IL, contains its own recording studio, classrooms, practice rooms, and state of the art band rehearsal space. The Harding Band Building is home to the UI Bands Library, which maintains and expands the world’s largest repository of wind band music in its various collections. The building also houses the Sousa Archives for Band Research, which contain nearly three-fourths of the world’s extant Sousa performace collection, the Herbert L. Clarke Library and Collection, the Carl Busch Historical Instrument Collection, and the A.A. Harding Archives.
Harding Band Building History
The University of Illinois Bands moved from its home in the basement of University Hall to its own quarters in the Temporary Armory Annex in 1928. The structure was offered to the University Band Department by University of Illinois President David Kinley. The annex, previous headquarters to the University’s Military Department during the First World War, would become “temporary” home to the University Bands. Certain improvements were made to the building at Harding’s request, while Kinley and Harding were in agreement that the building was strictly for temporary use by the Bands until a proper band building could be erected.
This wood frame building became known as the “Temporary” Band Building, a moniker that grew in its comic value the longer the bands resided in the building. From 1928 until 1957 – nearly 30 years – the University Bands were housed in this their “temporary” home.
The University of Illinois Bands finally moved into their existing building in the fall of 1957. The A.A. Harding Band Building was dedicated in the spring of 1958, during a jubilant 3-day ceremony on March 6,7, and 8. With the dedication of the building came the honor of being the world’s first band department to have a building specifically designed and built for its use.
Central to the design is the main band rehearsal room. Acoustical engineers Bolt, Beranek, and Newman were hired to design the room for maximum effectiveness. The room easily accommodates up to two hundred instrumentalists in the rehearsal space on its permanent semi-circular risers. Permanent theatre seats, also on permanent risers, seat approximately eighty guests in the special gallery area to the rear of the conductor. Folding chairs are often set up in the remaining space for large ensemble rehearsals, such as those of the Marching Illini and UI Basketball Band, making the total capacity of the room nearly five hundred persons at any one time. Drapes in rose tweed hang from ceiling to floor in back of the band area. Made in ten sections to careful acoustical specifications, the drapes may be drawn and hidden completely in specially made recesses to create an acoustically “live” rehearsal environment, or completely shut to create a sonically “dead” rehearsal space. Acoustical tiles on the ceiling absorb high frequencies. Designed as a “splayed” wall, perforated hardboard baffles on the east wall filled with crushed fiberglass filament absorb low frequencies. In the center of the west wall, opposite the conductor, is located a window to the radio, recording, and projection booth. Five other openings around the room with specially designed doors facilitate television cameras when opened.
Six section rehearsal rooms and twelve individual practice rooms are provided in the building, all sound treated and acoustically isolated. Corridors and storage areas isolate the main rehearsal room from the rest of the building on both the first and second floors, minimizing bleeding of sounds and vibrations through the walls between the main rehearsal room and other rooms. All rehearsal rooms have non-parallel surfaces (save floor to ceiling), special ceiling tiles absorbing high frequencies and splayed walls and/or corners to dampen low frequencies.
The University Bands Library, the world's largest repository of printed band and wind ensemble literature, has been assigned five rooms for its filing, sorting, arranging, storage, copying and duplication work. The building also houses the Sousa Archives for Band Research, which contain nearly three-fourths of the world’s extant Sousa performance collection, the Herbert L. Clarke Library and Collection, the A.A. Harding Archives, the Carl Busch Historical Instrument Collection which features Civil War over-the-shoulder brasses, and the University’s own historical instrument collection.
Facilities for storage, issue and care of instruments, uniforms, and other University Bands properties are conveniently located around the building in specially designed spaces. Individual lockers are provided for all musicians except for basses and percussion, who make use of a specially designed room at the rear of the main rehearsal chamber.
Administrative facilities are located centrally on the first floor along the east side of the building. All of the rehearsal spaces were designed with built-in wiring leading to the main offices of the directors, allowing for recording, playback, monitoring, and broadcast from any room.
An uncommon trait of this building at the time of design was the anticipation of a central air conditioning system, and the allocation of space in the design allowing for air conditioning and ventilation machinery. All air conditioning and ventilation machinery is located in a special equipment room doubly insulated from the main portion of the building, as well as occupying the “penthouse” – a specially designed room on what would be the third floor of the building. Heat is supplied from the University’s central power plant only a few blocks away. In the fall of 1998, automatic doors were installed at the North entrance to make the building more accessible to the handicapped.
Architecturally, the exterior of the Harding Band Building harmonizes with the modified Georgian style that many of the University’s buildings share. As the first building specifically built and dedicated for use by a band department, the A.A. Harding Band Building stands as a proud monument to the rich Illinois Bands Heritage – Past, Present, and Future.
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