Rubber Pads

Fearing that vibrations from the Broad Street Subway might leave audiences and performers shaken, The Kimmel Center’s design team bounced around an ingenious solution: rubber. Not long after the Center’s Broad Street site was cleared and excavated, hundreds of rubber "isolation" pads began arriving from Scougal Rubber of Seattle, Washington.

2,500-seat Verizon Hall rests upon 225 pads, and 120 pads support 650-seat Perelman Theater. Ranging in size from 20 x 16 inches to 24-inches square - the latter weighing in at 250 pounds - the rubber pads will work in concert with The Kimmel Center’s state-of-the-art acoustics to ensure a sound experience like no other. Although they have historically played only a modest role in concert-hall construction, rubber isolation pads are not a new building technology - they have also been used to prevent earthquake damage.