PHILANDER HALL is a private residence used for chamber concerts. It seats approx. 48 persons and has an acoustic suitable for chamber music and recitals. The piano is a 1920 Steinway model A-3, refurbished by Steinway in 1985. The French Double Harpsichord was built by Robert Ludden of Dixon from a Zimmer kit.

The hall is named after Philander Chase, the first Episcopal Bishop of Illinois. This notorious curmudgeon and stern disciplinarian founded Kenyon College in 1824 and was instrumental in developing the Episcopal church in the west. His nephew, Salmon Chase, served as Treasury Secretary under Abraham Lincoln and was named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Lincoln's second term.
Philander's father named him after a favorite poem:

Not ev'n Philander had bespoke his shroud,
Nor had he cause; a warning was deny'd:
How many fall as sudden, not as safe!
As sudden, though for years admonish'd home.
Of human ills the last extreme beware;
Beware, Lorenzo, a slow-sudden death.
How dreadful that deliberate surprise!
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.

- from The Complaint; or, Night Thoughts
by Edward Young, 1742

Philander Hall