CLEVELAND — The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame begins opening its $135 million expansion on Sunday, Nov. 22, when the new Haslam Auditorium welcomes the public as a free community space on Cleveland’s lakefront. The triangular addition is the museum’s largest construction project since its original building rose on North Coast Harbor, and it adds 50,000 square feet beside architect I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid, according to Cleveland Magazine.
The Nov. 22 date is a first opening, not the whole unveiling. The Rock Hall clarified that only the Haslam Auditorium portion opens later this month, Cleveland Scene reported in a Nov. 5 update. Cleveland Magazine reports a community day is slated for Nov. 22, and Scene reports the space will be free to enter — the museum’s new public-facing front door.
Visitors will feel the change before they see an artifact. The entrance shifts into the new building, steps from Erieside Avenue, where guests pass a lakeside garden and enter the Haslam Atrium to a panoramic Lake Erie view, with giant steps inviting them to linger, according to Cleveland Scene. “It’s a wow statement,” Rock Hall President and CEO Greg Harris told Cleveland Scene on a recent tour. “You come in, see the lake and feel that music is playing. This place is alive,” Harris told Scene.
The expansion’s headline act is Baker Hall, an oval, two-floor venue that Cleveland Magazine reports will hold up to 1,400 people for concerts and private events. Despite three decades of performances, it is the first dedicated indoor music venue the museum has built in its 31 years, according to Cleveland Magazine. Harris made clear to Cleveland Scene that sound is the point of the room: “We want any artist that plays this to think this is the greatest room they’ve ever played in,” he told Scene.
The names tell a local funding story. The Haslam Atrium is named for a $10 million gift from Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam, according to Cleveland Magazine, and Scene reports 95 percent of the expansion’s cash came from local donors. Outside, the Taylor Family Community Park will sit between the museum and the Great Lakes Science Center, will be run by Cleveland Metroparks and will connect to the Mandel Community Trail, according to Cleveland Magazine.
The design, by New York-based Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, is a conversation with Pei’s pyramid rather than a copy. Founder Vishaan Chakrabarti preserved even a muddy line on a shared wall marking where soil once filled the hill beside the museum. “It’s a record of what was there. It’s not supposed to feel precious,” Chakrabarti told Cleveland Magazine. “I.M. Pei is a hero of mine,” he told Cleveland Magazine. “The thought of touching it is a terrifying thought. But it had to be touched.”
The expansion answers problems built into the landmark itself. The museum broke ground on its $92 million original building in 1993 and opened in 1995 with a concert featuring Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen and Little Richard, according to Cleveland Magazine. But a glass pyramid was never an ideal concert hall: acoustics and a stage were afterthoughts, exhibit spaces shrink as the pyramid rises, and sunlight keeps most artifacts underground, Harris explained to Cleveland Magazine.
Leaders say they spent a decade maximizing every inch of the pyramid first. Cleveland Magazine traces the “Museum 2.0” push through the plaza letters and outdoor stage added in 2016, the Connor Theater in 2017 and the interactive Garage jam room in 2019. The expansion broke ground in 2023, and that October Harris and city and county leaders laid out its public-facing purpose, according to Cleveland Scene.
Some of the new building’s most ambitious work is invisible. A green roof will cut stormwater runoff and steady temperatures, and a deep lake water cooling system — a first for Northeast Ohio and Lake Erie, according to Cleveland Magazine — will chill the campus in summer. In winter, visitors will no longer cross a blustery plaza just to reach the doors.
The building is also built for classrooms, not only ticket holders. On a September tour described by Cleveland Magazine, three classrooms in the new Howley Family Education Center were being readied for field trips and community programs starting in January. Scene reports the Rock Hall also purchased the nearby Harbor Verandas in July, growing its footprint as other lakefront plans reshape the neighborhood.
More change starts the moment the doors open. Right after the debut, TAIT, a Pennsylvania production company, will lead a rethinking of the main exhibit hall, adding more than 10,000 square feet on the lower level, including a room for large touring exhibits, according to Cleveland Magazine. “We are a museum that’s dedicated to the living, breathing art form of rock ‘n’ roll,” Harris told Cleveland Magazine, “and live music is important to that.”
What happens next comes in stages. The 2026 inductions are set for Nov. 14 in Los Angeles, honoring Phil Collins, Billy Idol and others, before the Nov. 22 community day in Cleveland, according to Cleveland Magazine. Education programs follow in January, and the induction ceremony returns to Cleveland in late 2027 — by then, in a museum substantially larger and more open to the lake than the one that opened in 1995.