Philadelphia will get its first major building named for Marian Anderson. In Danbury, Conn., she’s everywhere

DANBURY, Conn. — Shrouded in acid-free tissue paper, an ivory mushroom-shaped cloche that once belonged to South Philly-born contralto Marian Anderson, sits in the far right corner of the Danbury Museum’s Huntington Hall.

Its silver brooch sparkles.

Anderson wore the felted wool chapeau as she sang the national anthem at Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1957 inauguration. Her velvety voice filled the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol, marking the first time a Black person would perform at the swearing-in of a U.S. president.

The hat is part of a collection of Anderson’s clothing and accessories to be displayed in the Academy of Music and the Kimmel Center lobby on Saturday, June 8, during a gala, concert, and rededication ceremony celebrating Verizon Hall’s new name: Marian Anderson Hall. The renaming is made possible by a $25 million donation from philanthropists Leslie Anne Miller and her husband, Richard B. Worley. The exhibit will feature items of clothing and decades-old memorabilia, including Anderson’s pitch pipe, awards, and a few playbills. It opens to the public at 2 p.m. and is on loan from the Danbury Museum for just one day.

“The hat is from Bonwit Teller,” Danbury’s assistant director Michele Lee Amundsen said, pointing to the still-vibrant label stitched inside the hat. “It’s such a special piece of our collection and this is such a special occasion.”

“Every ticket, every handbill, everything that’s at the Marian Anderson hall will have her name on it,” Brigid Guertin, the museum’s executive director, piped in. “That’s so exciting, it’s so monumental, it’s so exciting. We are so excited that Danbury is a part of it.”

Anderson, born in South Philly in 1897, grew up singing in Union Baptist Church and the People’s Chorus, a group of 100 singers from different Black churches. She attended William Penn High School, transferred to the South Philadelphia’s High School for Girls, took lessons with Philadelphia African American soprano, Emma Azalia Hackley, and secretly studied with white classical music singers, afraid of losing business if it got out that Anderson was their pupil. In 1918, she performed and six years later she sang at the New York Philharmonic, kicking off her career.

She’s famously remembered for her 1939 performance in front of Lincoln Memorial before an integrated audience of 75,000, after the Daughters of the American Revolution stopped her from performing at Constitution Hall because she was Black. She established Philadelphia’s Marian Anderson Award in 1943. In 1955 she sang the role of Ulrica in Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera, becoming the first Black woman to have a principal role at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.

Renaming the city’s premier music hall in Anderson’s name is a fitting tribute to one of Philadelphia’s most celebrated Black women. But in Danbury, where Anderson lived out her later years, portraits of Marian Anderson hang in municipal buildings. She’s featured in murals dotting the bucolic landscape and life-size reproductions of the Marian Anderson’s 2005 Black Heritage stamp greet visitors almost everywhere. And of course, there is Danbury Museum’s Marian Anderson Studio where her playbills, music notes, letters, and journals written in Anderson’s bold cursive are on display.

So, shortly after the Kimmel Center announced plans to name its prestigious concert hall in her honor, Katharine Schimmer, director of strategic initiatives for The Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts, reached out to Amundsen and Guertin.

The ladies of Danbury were on it.

By the early 1940s, Anderson was at the peak of her internationally renowned career and serious about her beau, Philly-born, white-passing architect Orpheus Fisher. The couple dreamed of settling down in a suburb of New York City. Fisher started several deals, but despite Anderson’s worldwide fame, the couple was turned away when sellers discovered the home was for her, too.

Fisher purchased 100 acres of land about two miles from downtown Danbury while Anderson was on tour in Hawaii. Danbury, like Philadelphia, was home to free Blacks during the 18th and 19th centuries and by the 1940s, a vibrant Black middle class lived there.

Anderson and Fisher secretly married in 1943 at Danbury’s at Bethel Methodist Church and Fisher built a 1950′s split-level home complete with a 500-square-foot studio where Anderson practiced singing. They named the compound Marianna Farms, a combination of Marian and her mother, Anna’s names. “Marian may have been born in Philadelphia, but she’s a daughter of Danbury,” Guertin said.

Known around town as Mrs. Fisher, she was active in the Danbury arts community, friends with mystery writer Rex Stout and actor Fredric March. She joined the Danbury Music Centre’s board of directors in 1969 and today the center bears her name. Anderson helped convince the revered composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, to perform at the Danbury State Fairgrounds in 1974 for the 100th birthday of celebrated composer Charles Ives. “That’s the kind of weight she carried in classical music circles and in our town,” Amundsen said.

Anderson embodied elegance on stage and in her personal life, said Ginette DePreist, Anderson’s niece. At the turn of the 20th century, well-dressed Black people enjoyed an elevated stature within their own communities and many believed if they dressed well they would be treated with humanity by White America. Anderson’s wardrobe — a collection of silky bias cut gowns, extravagant furs, adorned hats, and bold, embroidered kimonos — were her armor, a tool she used in her activism.

“She wanted to prove to her race that she belonged and she did that through fashion,” DePreist said.

Before she died, Anderson culled through her extensive wardrobe with Danbury philanthropist Jane Goodman, some outfits were bought by Bette Midler during auction at Sotheby’s. But a large group was earmarked for the Danbury Museum — including the artist studio Fisher built, that today is open to the public and houses the bulk of the exhibit.

On a recent rainy Thursday morning at the Danbury Museum, eight of Anderson’s dresses await to be steamed and readied for their first — and only — trip away from Danbury. Outside of the new Marian Anderson Hall, a embroidered damask robe will be displayed on a dress form. It will be joined by a sage and gold bias cut gown she wore at a concert in Vienna, a pink satin Stern & Co. gown she donned at a New York concert and a blue silk gown she wore at a concert in Japan attended by then first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Anderson wore all of these pieces during the 1930s.

In addition to the Danbury pieces, DePreist sent two of Anderson’s shirts — one beaded piece she likely wore to afternoon soirees, and a sequined shirt Anderson to a celebration of her life at Carnegie Hall in the 1990s that will be on display at the Kimmel, too.

A sleek, black jumpsuit by Pennsylvania-born designer Zelda Wynn Valdes — the Black woman credited with designing the original Playboy Bunny waitress costume — an olive green cocktail dress designed by Academy Award-winning costumer Barbara Karinska, and a tan shirtwaist dress from Wanamakers will be displayed on protective hangers at the Academy of Music, where the gala will take place.

Although the Marian Anderson Museum and Historical Society in Anderson’s onetime home at 762 S. Martin Street is a national treasure, the power of her voice and legacy stands to be best remembered at the Kimmel Center. Renaming Philadelphia’s premier concert hall after Anderson celebrates her legacy and the contributions of many of the city’s Black people who lived in Philadelphia before and during the 20th century whose contributions were purposely overlooked by history.

Backstage, a sepia-toned photo of Anderson as young woman will remind the orchestra and guest musicians of Anderson’s legacy as they take the stage. A historical timeline of Anderson’s life will be displayed in the Kimmel Center lobby, and Schimmer is working with Washington’s National Portrait Gallery to reproduce and enlarge two paintings that will be a part a permanent exhibit set to open before next year’s orchestra season.

“We want people to learn about this trailblazing artist who opened so many doors for so many people,” Schimmer said, “and help people understand why one of America’s major concert halls is now being named by this Philadelphia woman.”