Our History
The 560 Music Center was built in 1930 as the Shaare Emeth Temple. This beautiful Art Deco building was home to the Saint Louis Conservatory and School for the Arts (CASA) from 1974-1994. Following the merger by the St. Louis Symphony and CASA in 1994, the building housed the St. Louis Symphony Community Music School. In September 2001, the Community Music School joined with Webster University. In October 2006, Washington University took possession of the facility, and the renovated facility opened to our students in the fall of 2007. The building contains three performance spaces that can accommodate solo recitals to full orchestra concerts, as well as host a myriad of other events.
Washington University in St. Louis occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary lands of the Osage Nation, Missouria, Illinois Confederacy and many other tribes as the custodians of the land where we reside, occupy, and call home. We recognize their sovereignty was never ceded after unjust removal and encourage your own research on tribal removal, tribal sovereignty and the history of the land you reside. We promote the inclusion of tribal history and the incorporation of contemporary thoughts and actions into your work. In offering this land acknowledgement, we affirm and support Tribal sovereignty, history and experiences by elders past, present, and seven generations yet to come through their continued connection to this land.