The austere color palette and simple lines seen in the layout also serve to direct the audience to the music without distraction of ornate decoration.

Upon their deaths, three months apart in 1934, they left their entire estate of around $1 million to the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo with the request that the funds go to the development of a music hall.

[12] Kleinhans Music Hall opened on October 12, 1940 with an inaugural concert by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under Maestro Franco Autori.

[13] On September 8, 1964, Robert F. Kennedy, who at the time was the Democratic candidate to become a United States Senator from New York, gave a speech at Kleinhans in front of a crowd of 6,000 people.

[14] On November 9, 1967, four months after the city was rocked by the Buffalo riot, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech at Kleinhans titled "The Future of Integration."