Brisbane Festival Hall

Brisbane Festival Hall was an indoor arena located in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

The Festival Hall was originally known as Brisbane Stadium, which was built in 1910. In 1959 the venue was extensively renovated by the government as part of the Centenary of Queensland. It was opened on 27 April 1959 and re-named Festival Hall. With a capacity of 4000 people, it was the largest indoor public venue in the Brisbane inner city area, and it remained the city's primary indoor venue for more than forty years.

Like similar venues in other Australian cities, Festival Hall originally had been built as a boxing stadium, but as the popularity of boxing and wrestling waned after the introduction of television, it began to be used more often for other forms of entertainment, including the imported American sports craze "Roller Derby", and as a venue for concerts and theatrical presentationscite web |author=MILESAGO 2004 |publisher=milesago.com |date=undated |url=http://www.milesago.com/venues/bris-festhall.htm |title=MILESAGO - Venues - name |accessdate=2008-01-20 |format=html ] .

Brisbane Festival Hall hosted the Brisbane performances for virtually every major tour by visiting overseas artists. Notable artists who performed at the Festival Hall include The Beatles (1964), Led Zeppelin (1972), AC/DC (1976), Bob Marley (1979), U2 (1984), Nirvana (1992) and Depeche Mode (1994).

Brisbane Festival Hall closed on August 29 2003, and the building was subsequently sold and demolished to make way for an apartment development known as Festival Towers. The final concert held there, Michael Franti and Spearhead, took place on August 9, 2003. The seats from the venue were sold off as souvenirs in lots of three.

Devine Limited, developers of the Festival Towers apartment building, subsequently commissioned the Queensland Performing Arts Centre's Performing Arts Museum to design and install a "Walk of Fame" display commemorating the history of the site. Located within the entry lobby of Festival Towers, the display consists of a wall-mounted installation of backlit panels, incorporating original seatbacks from Festival Hall, with images of performers and other significant figures in the Festival Hall story. Other smaller panels feature photographs and history of the sitecite web |author=Collections Australia Network |publisher=Collections Australia Network |date=undated |url=http://www.collectionsaustralia.net/news_item/95 |title=CAN - Collections Australia Network - Festival Hall Brisbane Commemorated |accessdate=2008-01-20 |format=html, javascript ] .

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