It was built in 1929 by the Daughters of the American Revolution to house its annual convention when membership delegations outgrew Memorial Continental Hall.

[3] The Hall is a Neoclassical style structure, faced with Alabama limestone and houses the largest auditorium in Washington, D.C.

This auditorium is unusual with its U-shaped balcony, necessary to provide the enormous amount of seating required by the program while retaining practical sight distances.

In 1939, during racial segregation in Washington, D.C., the DAR denied African-American opera singer Marian Anderson the opportunity to sing at the Hall, causing First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to resign her membership in protest.

Instead, Anderson performed (with the aid of Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt) a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. She sang before a crowd of more than 75,000 people and a radio audience in the millions.