What to See in West Lafayette - Top Sights and Attractions

Theater in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. The Elliott Hall of Music is a theater located on the campus of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. With a seating capacity of 6,005, it is one of the largest proscenium theaters in the world, and is 45 seats larger than Radio City Music Hall. The facility is named after Edward C. Elliott, who served as President of Purdue University from 1922 to 1945. The stage of the hall is one of the largest in the country. It is roughly the same size as the stage of the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California.

The hall was designed by Walter Scholer, assisted by consulting architect J. Andre Fouilhoux (who was also one of the architects for New York's Radio City Music Hall). Construction began in October 1938 and was completed on May 2, 1940, at a cost of US$1.205 million. The facility was dedicated as the "Purdue Hall of Music" on May 3–4, 1940, and was renamed in honor of Elliott in 1958.

The Elliott Hall of Music is connected to Hovde Hall, Purdue University's administration building, by a walkway on the second floor. This arrangement allows for the use of the formal entry and receiving hall in the administration building (otherwise not used at nights and weekends when performances are typically held) to serve the Hall of Music, saving both cost and space during the depression era construction.

During spring commencement exercises, students process up the staircase in front of Hovde Hall and go through the walkway into the Hall of Music where the ceremony is held. For winter commencement exercises, students enter the Hall of Music through the Purdue Bands entrance located behind the stage, where they proceed under the structure and to the rear of the auditorium where they enter, as this entrance is much closer to the building where candidates are marshaled for the procession.

Locally, the building is informally known as Elliott Hall or the Hall of Music. Evening exams for large, multi-section classes (e.g. Introductory Calculus, Principles of Accounting) are often scheduled in Elliott Hall of Music. In a typical exam seating arrangement (every other seat occupied), Elliott can handle about 3000 students during one exam.

Elliott Hall of Music contains the offices of the Purdue All-American Marching Band, Purdue Bands and Orchestras, the WBAA studio, and Hall of Music Productions, the department which provides facility management and box office services for the Hall of Music, as well as production services throughout the Purdue campus.^[5]

Building. Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity House, also known as Maltese Manor, is a historic fraternity house located at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Tippecanoe County, Indiana. It was built in 1920, and is a 2+1⁄2-story, rectangular, Tudor Revival style brick and stone building. It has a truncated hipped roof, parapeted tower, and platform porch extending across the front facade. A one-story kitchen addition was built in 1940, and a three-story addition in 1963. The building was remodeled in 1995, after a fire on the second and third floors. It housed the Indiana Gamma Omicron chapter of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity from its construction until May 2021.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.^[8]

Building in Tippecanoe County. The Purdue State Bank Building is a historic structure in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, designed by American architect and Frank Lloyd Wright's mentor Louis Sullivan. Completed in 1914, the bank is the smallest and least expensive of Sullivan's "Jewel Boxes", a series of Midwestern banks designed in the modern style at the end of his career. Built on a tiny, trapezoidal lot between two streets, the structure is less ornamental than most of the architect's other work, including only a few terra cotta panels. The building cost $14,600 to be constructed, of which only about 10% was paid to Sullivan, barely covering his expenses. A local paper at the time referred to Sullivan as "one of the most noted bank architects in the United States".

During the 1950s, a stone portion was added to the back of the building and the original doorway was converted into a window and then an ATM. The building is located one block away from Purdue University and currently houses a branch of Chase bank.^[10]