Columbia Records - Recording Studios

Recording Studios

In 1913, Columbia moved into the Woolworth Building in New York City and housed its first recording studio there. In 1917, Columbia used this studio to make a recording of a dixieland band, the Original Dixieland Jass Band.

In New York City, Columbia Records had some of the most highly respected sound recording studios, including the Columbia 30th Street Studio at 207 East 30th Street ("Studio C" and "Studio D"), the CBS Studio Building at 49 East 52nd Street ("Studio B" on the second floor and "Studio E" on the sixth floor), and one of their earliest recording studios, "Studio A" at 799 Seventh Avenue near 52nd Street.

The Columbia 30th Street Studio was considered by some in the music industry to be the best sounding room in its time and others consider it to have been the greatest recording studio in history.

Columbia also had the highly respected Liederkranz Hall, at 111 East 58th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues, in New York City, a building built by and formerly belonging to a German cultural and musical society, The Liederkranz Society, and used as a recording studio. The producer Morty Palitz had been instrumental in convincing Columbia Records to begin to use the Liederkranz Hall studio for recording music, additionally convincing the conductor Andre Kostelanetz to make some of the first recordings in Liederkranz Hall which until then had only been used for CBS Symphony radio shows. In the late 1940s, the large Liederkranz Hall space was physically rearranged to make room for television studios.