The 2,743-seat hall was completed in 1980 at a cost of US$28 million to give the San Francisco Symphony a permanent home.

A "cloud" of movable convex acrylic reflecting panels over the stage enables the acoustic space to be adjusted to suit the size of the orchestra and audience, while adjustable fabric banners around the auditorium can alter the reverberation time from approximately one to two-and-one-half seconds.

The modifications included: narrowing and shaping the walls above the stage to reduce the volume of space and increase useful reflections, replacing the cloud of reflector discs with a more effective array of curved rectangular panels covering a larger area and now computer adjustable, moving the walls of the floor-level seating inward to make the audience area narrower and more rectangular, adding aisles to replace the former continental seating, adding diffusing elements in various parts of the hall, and increasing the "rake" of the floor seating to provide better sightlines.

[4] A Henry Moore bronze sculpture, Large Four Piece Reclining Figure 1972–73 (1973), is displayed outside the hall at the corner of Grove Street and Van Ness Avenue.

In 1980, Paul Goldberger of The New York Times called the hall "a building utterly confused about style, a poor hybrid that has neither the verve of one aspect of the city's identity nor the powerful tradition of another.