In the mid-1960s, Peter van Dijk, a talented 37-year-old architect, teamed up with Christopher Jaffe, an expert in acoustics, and structural engineer Richard Genser to design the Blossom Music Center for the Cleveland Orchestra. The center, located within the stunning Cuyahoga Valley National Park, became one of van Dijk’s most notable works and has since become a landmark destination for music lovers and architecture enthusiasts.
The Blossom Music Center was designed to offer a unique blend of architectural beauty and outstanding acoustics, making it the perfect venue for the Cleveland Orchestra’s summer concerts. The design, which was ahead of its time, resulted from the collaboration between van Dijk, Jaffe, and Genser, each of whom brought their unique skills and expertise to the project. Today, the Blossom Music Center remains one of the most important cultural landmarks in Ohio and continues to offer world-class musical experiences to audiences worldwide.
Blossom Music Center Technical Information
- Architects1-3: Peter van Dijk
- Location: Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, USA
- Topics: Amphitheatres, Concrete, Weathering Steel
- Project Year: 1966–1967
- Drawings: © Peter van Dijk
- Photographs: © G. E. Kidder Smith (MIT Libraries), © Gerry Simon
I see it as an obligation to withhold your ego, to not put your stamp on it, to not run a chrome-plated duct through a space and say, ‘I was here expressing the mechanical equipment,’
– Peter van Dijk
Blossom Music Center Photographs
The Blossom Music Center is an outdoor amphitheater located in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, named after the family of Dudley S. Blossom, who served as president of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1936 to 1938. The site’s natural parabolic setting, the pavilion’s sloping slate roof, and the area’s natural wooded surroundings distinguish it from other contemporary amphitheaters. The facility, designed by architect Peter van Dijk, is located on 800 acres (320 ha) of natural woods inside the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, about 10 miles (16 km) north of downtown Akron and 33 miles (53 km) south of downtown Cleveland. In 2011, the Musical Arts Association sold 580 acres (230 ha) of Blossom’s undeveloped acreage to the National Park Service to add to the park. This benefited the owners financially and protected Blossom’s natural setting. In 2003, the venue underwent a $17 million renovation.
Construction of the Amphitheater
Before construction began in 1966, van Dijk and his team, which included structural engineer Miklos Peller and acoustician Christopher Jaffe, took a reconnaissance trip to the best-known amphitheaters of the day. To improve their designs, they studied other outdoor amphitheaters, including Ravinia, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1936, and Tanglewood, where the Boston Symphony Orchestra has played during the summer since 1937. One major flaw they saw in the other projects was their acoustics. On that trip, the main concepts of the Blossom Amphitheater started to take shape.
In collaboration with Christopher Jaffe, they concluded the space would need a volume where you could hear and see the direct sound and the reverberating sound lingering for up to three seconds. That is how they proposed the orchestra shell that encloses the musicians on stage, which can help the sound from the orchestra bounce right into the audience. The trio created the curving roof of Blossom so that the sound would “expand and project,” The structure used long-lasting materials such as concrete and weathering steel, a resilient external structure to ensure the acoustics within were always protected. The design also reflected the surrounding landscape.
The steel rusts and then the rust forms a scale, like a bark on a tree or a scab on a wound. And then it doesn’t rust anymore. The more it rusts the tighter it gets as a protection. It’s this brown color. That was the first use in Ohio of that material. And then the roof and the sides are slate. The point is that those three materials (concrete, weathering steel and slate) are forever. So the main cost of maintenance is mowing the lawns.
– Peter van Dijk 4
Van Dijk admitted to being “nervous as hell” about meeting the legendary George Szell, then maestro of the Cleveland Orchestra, until Szell put him at ease by greeting him in Dutch. Szell had conducted the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and picked up some of the language.
The Blossom Music Center Nowadays
Nowadays, the pavilion is composed of slate and tubular steel and has a capacity of 6,051 seats. Behind the pavilion is the general admission lawn, which can seat an additional 15,000 people.
Blossom is the summer home of the Cleveland Orchestra, which performs its annual Blossom Festival there. The venue also hosts a full summer schedule of popular music acts and symphonic performances. The Musical Arts Association, the orchestra’s non-profit parent organization, owns it.
Blossom Music Center Plan
Blossom Music Center Image Gallery
About Peter van Dijk
Peter van Dijk (February 13, 1929 – September 7, 2019) was an American architect born in Indonesia who spent most of his childhood in the Netherlands. After earning his undergraduate degree from the University of Oregon, he enrolled in the master’s degree program in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There, he studied with the great Louis Kahn and Pietro Belluschi. Belluschi introduced Van Dijk to Eero Saarinen, of St. Louis Arch fame, who gave Van Dijk his first job. He worked four years for Saarinen, whom he remembers as a “great teacher, never arrogant, and very supportive of younger talent.”
Van Dijk also spent a year in Rome on a Fulbright fellowship, immersing himself in the enduring art and architecture of the Renaissance. “The thoughtful architect,” he once wrote, “will appraise the spirit which moved other ages”—not for the purposes of imitating, but of “truly understanding it, which means seeing the thousand ties which bind architecture to its own age”—everything, that is, from materials to assumptions about things like community and our place in the universe.
Other works from Peter Van Dijk
- Acoustician: Christopher Jaffe
- Structural Engineer: Miklos Peller
- Engineering Firm: R. M. Gensert Associates
- Peter Vand Dijk interview with Mark Arehart
Back in 2007 I was at Blossom doing some photography and had the good fortune to run into Peter. I asked him if he would do me the honor of allowing me to photograph him with Blossom as a background. He very kindly gave me some of his time to do a quick couple of photos. I would like to share one with this site . I put a copyright notice on the photo so it would not be used for commercial purposes. To whom may I send a jpg?
Hi Gerry,
Thank you for reaching out and sharing your experience with Peter. We would be more than happy to see the photo that you took of Peter at Blossom. Please feel free to send the JPG file to [email protected] We would be happy to share with our readers and ensure proper credit is given.
Best regards,
ArchEyes Team