Symphony Hall is a concert hall that is home to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, located at 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BSO founder Henry Lee Higginson commissioned architectural firm McKim, Mead and White to create a new, permanent home for the orchestra. Symphony Hall can accommodate an audience of 2,625. The hall was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1999 and is a pending Boston Landmark. It was then noted that "Symphony Hall remains, acoustically, among the top three concert halls in the world (sharing this distinction with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Vienna's Musikvereinsaal), and is considered the finest in the United States."[2][3] Symphony Hall, located one block from Berklee College of Music to the north and one block from the New England Conservatory to the south, also serves as home to the Boston Pops as well as the site of many concerts of the Handel and Haydn Society.