Erik Brady

Kleinhans Music Hall will turn 85 in October. It doesn't look a day over 40.

Sure, it's had some work done – most recently a $15-million face-lift – but its classic bone structure remains timeless. Kleinhans is one of the great public spaces we have in Buffalo.

Put it in our civic timeline just after War Memorial Stadium , which opened in 1937. Construction on Kleinhans began a year later – and no one would ever call it a Rockpile.

Today is the birthday of both Eliel and Eero Saarinen, the father-and-son architects from Finland who designed the music hall. (Eliel was born on this date in 1873, Eero in 1910.) That makes today a good time to celebrate them and, of course, their greatest collaboration.

Their jewel on Symphony Circle has the graceful curves of a violin. "As

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