Orchestra Hall is a concert hall at 3711 Woodward Avenue in Midtown Detroit, Michigan, United States. The hall is renowned for its superior acoustic properties and serves as the home of the internationally known Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO), the fourth oldest orchestra in the United States. With the creation of an adjoining auditorium for jazz and chamber music in 2003, Orchestra Hall became part of the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
Due to the financial difficulties of the Great Depression, the orchestra was compelled to leave Orchestra Hall and enter into a more economical arrangement to share the Masonic Temple Theatre. Orchestra Hall was vacant for two years until it was purchased by new owners. For ten years Orchestra Hall presented jazz artists under the name Paradise Theater, opening on Christmas Eve 1941. The Paradise hosted the most renowned jazz musicians, including Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington. The entertainment at Paradise Theater often included a live act and a movie from a B movie studio like Republic Pictures, Monogram Pictures, or Producers Releasing Corporation. A typical show on October 27, 1944 featured Cab Calloway and his Cotton Club Orchestra on stage and the movie That's My Baby! (Monogram, 1944, Richard Arlen, Ellen Drew).
The terms of the Murphy organ's donation to Orchestra Hall were such that the title of the organ reverted back to the Murphys when the DSO vacated Orchestra Hall in 1929. The Murphys arranged for the organ to be donated to Detroit's Calvary Presbyterian Church. A lawsuit was filed to compel Paradise Theater management to allow the organ's removal; the move was eventually carried out by the Toledo Pipe Organ Company and church members in the middle of the night.