Hollywood Bowl

This guide to the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles follows architect Lloyd Wright, son of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the band shells he built for the venue's stage in the late 1920s. It covers his jagged pyramid-shaped shell, thrown up in about ten days from leftover movie-set lumber and modeled on stepped stone temples of the ancient Southwest, and how the Bowl's board reacted to it despite musicians praising its sound. Wright returned afterward with a second design, a shell of concentric wooden rings angled to project sound without microphones.