In 1821, the architect, master builder (and friend of Zelter’s) Karl Friedrich Schinkel presented a draught for Sing-Akademie’s building on the plot behind Neue Wache, which it had received as a gift from the king. Schinkel decided on a two-storey building. The floor of the concert hall is just a few steps above ground and does not have a basement. On the building’s apex, a Lyra with fish volutes and a swan crown is emblematised, and in the pediment Greek emblems are to be found. 

In Schinkel’s drawings, the hall extends over two floors. An architrave frames the ground floor of the hall, and in the entry of the barrow side are the doors, leading in from the lobby, while at the stage side rises the “amphitheatre of the choir”. The interior design of the upper floor features on the architrave free-standing Doric columns. Behind those columns there  is a small side balcony on each side for just one row of seats each. The back balcony above the lobby has five ascending rows of seats, behind an intermediate gallery as a doubling of the columns. On the other side, behind the podium for the singers, is the so-called “kleiner Saal”, the small hall, i.e. behind the four free-standing Doric columns. The resulting five openings to the “hall for winter and smaller exercises” have, resulting from the idea of a variable use of space, “doors which can disappear into the ground, so that these two halls are united”, as Schinkel notes in his drawing. A concert hall that owes its shape to a concentrated and strictly disciplined architect’s will geared above all towards the music.

The Brunswick architect Carl Theodor Ottmer, using Schinkel’s drawings, maintained the various rooms, including the small winter hall, but introduced the entire ground floor as an entry space, so that the hall was moved to the upper floor. This design provided the desired proper concert hall structure, but the fact that the hall had just one balcony on the side gave the hall a dynamic element which many found distracting, adding also an element of architectural ambiguity.

Building commenced in May 1825 next to Festungsgraben. The high water levels made digging difficult, so that an entire basement floor had to be dug into the ground and a cellar had to be built, as Zeltner complained to Goethe. Once the exterior building was completed (which is marked in Germany with a special celebration called “Richtfest”) on 25 November 1826, Schinkel’s budget had already been used up. On 8 April 1827, after two years of construction, there was a festive opening of the building, which henceforth served the institution as a home base and site for presenting its art.

Of interest architecturally speaking is the seating diagonally against the windows at the long side of the hall (i.e. the west side) chosen for the 1848 meetings of the Prussian Landtag (parliament) held in the building. Viewed from the speaker, the seating has a classical symmetrical arrangement. In the back of the diagonal rows of seats, with a view of the side windows, is the side balcony. The position of the columns in the small hall as well as those of the lobby balcony are in the back of the longitudinal seats. This arrangement of seats puts the speaker and open debate much more into the centre than would have been the case if the usual seating arrangement for concerts had been maintained.

In 1865, an interior reorganisation of the staircase and corridor spaces of the hall took place, designed by the architect Martin Gropius, in order to gain additional seats below the back balcony, and later an organ was also installed.

In 1875, an additional staircase was added to the southwest corner – architecturally speaking not really an improvement, but a flexible measure in terms of the use of the concert hall. 

In 1888 a second staircase was added to the north-western corner, the Kleiner Saal (smaller hall), also called Cäciliensaal, was closed, and the stage was enlarged. Thus the building had demonstrated that it could support Sing-Akademie’s rising career.

Direktor Zelter and the Sing-Akademie faced many problems with finances and the difficult plot. Schinkel’s design could not be realised due to financial constraints. As early as 1812, Schinkel had made drawings for a hall for the Sing-Akademie at the academy of arts, which the academy rather abruptly refused due to its own lack of space. 

The oldest and largest concert hall in Berlin received much praise for its excellent acoustics. The great artists of their times gave concerts there, like Niccolò Paganini, Franz Liszt, Clara and Robert Schumann, Anton Grigorjevitsch Rubinstein, and Johannes Brahms.

Between 1926 and 1943, a whole series of recordings was made there. Beginning in autumn 1926, Electrola recorded many concerts there, such as with Staatskapelle Berlin conducted by stars like Leo Blech, Erich Kleiber, and Otto Klemperer, but the world famous UFA film song “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt” by the great Marlene Dietrich was also recorded at the Sing-Akademie. In 1932, Telefunken-Platte entered into an exclusive contract with Sing-Akademie, and now had the exclusive right to make recordings in the hall; the technical recording equipment was placed in the cellar. Every year, several hundred recordings were made, for example with the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler or Willem Mengelberg, with artists like Peter Igelhoff and Peter Kreuder. 

In addition, Sing-Akademie also rented out is large hall for scholarly and scientific events to the great and significant men of their time: Alexander von Humboldt gave his Cosmos lecturers there, Rudolf Virchow spoke about “Goethe as Scientist”, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin on “Conquering the air”, Ernst Haeckl lectured on topics like “The struggle for the idea of development” and “On our current knowledge about the origins of man”, Berthold Auerbach lectured on “Goethe and narrative art”, or – for the learned Society at the Sing-Akademie – Heinrich Schliemann’s friend Friedrich Adler lectured on “The world cities of the art of architecture”, Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben spoke “On the theory of wounds and the newer methods of wound dressing”, Alexander Braun gave a lecture entitled “The ice age of the earth”, Ernst Curtius lectured on “Athen’s Acropolis” – and many more lectures besides. 

The building was seriously damaged in World War II. The invaluable music collection had, on the initiative of Sing-Akademie’s director at the time, Georg Schumann, been relocated and thus saved from destruction.  As a consequence of the building’s damage, the Sing-Akademie, with members from all over the city of Berlin, moved its work to the western sector to Steglitz (Titania-Palast). 

The original building at the Kastanienwäldchen was seized by the Soviet occupation forces after the end of World War II, placed under Soviet administration, and reconstructed in 1947 as the theatre building of the neighbouring House of the Cultures of Soviet peoles. In 1952, the Maxim-Gorki-Theatre moved into the building.  

(German source: Wikipedia - http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sing-Akademie_zu_Berlin)