Eisemann Center Main Venue Named
Margaret and Al Hill Performance Hall

The City of Richardson announced today that the l,500 seat venue of the Charles W. Eisemann Center for Performing Arts and Corporate Presentations has been named the Margaret and Al Hill Performance Hall.  The hall is named in honor of Margaret and in memory of her husband Al Hill.  Through their family holdings in the Galatyn Park Corporation, the Hills donated the land valued at $1.2 million on which the Eisemann Center is being constructed.  The announcement was made at a ceremony held at the construction site in the Galatyn Park Urban Center. 

“The entire Hill family is appreciative of having the main venue named the Margaret and Al Hill Performance Hall,” said Al G. Hill, Jr., president of Galatyn Properties Ltd. “We are proud to have been involved along with the Eisemann family and the City of Richardson in making this special center a reality.” 

The Eisemann Center will feature three venues: the l,500 seat Margaret and Al Hill Performance Hall; a 350 seat adaptable theatre; and a 3,150 square foot meeting and banquet hall.  The Margaret and Al Hill Performance Hall is large in capacity, but intimate, warm and inviting by design.  With audience seating on two levels, its interior architectural treatment with natural wood-clad walls sculpted to meet acoustical requirements is an exceptional environment for symphonic music, dance, musical theatre, opera, corporate meetings and awards programs.  The stage area, consisting of 4,815 square feet of production space, will be the largest of the primary performing arts facilities surveyed in the Dallas/Fort Worth market, with the exception of Fort Worth’s Bass Hall. 

“The City of Richardson and the Hill family have had an outstanding relationship over the years,” Richardson Mayor Gary Slagel said, “We have shared visions and dreams and have collaborated on various projects.  Richardson has been fortunate to have one landowner with so much real estate within our boundaries.  We have been able to plan together and the Galatyn Park project would not have happened without the Hill family. 

Resulting from a unique public/private partnership between Galatyn Park, DART and the City of Richardson, Galatyn Park Urban Center is one of the most innovative developments in the country.  A shining star in the Galatyn Park Urban Center is the Eisemann Center, designed for artistic and cultural performances and corporate presentations.  Galatyn Park is located along Richardson’s Telecom Corridor ® at Central Expressway and the President George Bush Turnpike and will be the area’s most exciting new professional urban environment.  The 500-acre mixed use, rail-transit-oriented development will include the Eisemann Center, a DART light rail station, a public plaza, a full-service hotel and a 12-acre mixed-use development site immediately south of the plaza. 

Margaret Hunt was born in Lake Village, Arkansas.  She lived in El Dorado, Arkansas, and Tyler during her youth while her father H. L. Hunt was building his oil empire.  The family moved to Dallas in 1938 after she graduated from Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, VA.  She was Queen of the Tyler Rose Festival in 1934 and attended the first Cotton Bowl football game in l937. 

Albert Galatyn Hill was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and moved with his parents to Colorado when he was a young boy.  He attended Colorado College in Colorado Springs and his first job was with the Exchange National Bank.  He moved to Dallas with the accounting firm of Barron, Wade & Guthrie, and then entered the oil and gas business as an independent prior to World War II. 

Al and Margaret were married in l938 and enjoyed 50 years of marriage before his death in l988.  The couple had three children, Lyda, Al G. Jr. and Alinda.  Al purchased Seven Falls, a scenic attraction in Colorado Springs in l946.  He added colored lights to illuminate the one-mail canyon in l947 and continued to improve it over the years.  In l947, he and two partners founded the city of Palm Desert, California and built the Shadow Mountain Club.  In 1949, he purchased the mesa overlooking the Garden of the Gods and developed the Garden of the Gods Club and Kissing Camels Golf Course and Estates.  He loved tennis and was a member of the Colorado College tennis team.  He founded the Dallas Tennis Association and built the first indoor tennis courts west of the Mississippi River in l957. 

Margaret is a long-time member of the Dallas Woman’s Club and served as its president.  Her interests in gardening and the environment led to her memberships in the Founder’s Garden Club, the Dallas Garden Club and the Junior League Garden Club.  Through the Junior League of Dallas, Margaret worked with a number of service organizations including Day Care Association of Metropolitan Dallas, the Easter Seal campaign and the Dallas County Heritage Society.  She founded the Women’s Guild of the Society for Crippled Children and considers it one of her greatest achievements.  An early fundraiser for the Society, Art About Town, was held in the Hill’s backyard until the show outgrew the space. 

“We are delighted to have the Hill name attached to one of the two prominent performance spaces within the Eisemann Center,” said Managing Director Bruce C. MacPherson.  “The Hill Performance Hall by its size alone will play host to a distinguished lineup of local, regional, national and international attractions on an annual basis.  Its additional use as a corporate meeting location gives the naming all the more meaning given the Hill’s ongoing involvement and partnership with in the development of a quality business environment for Richardson.”