The history of the Elkhorn Band Shell goes back to the early 1920s, when brass instrument manufacturer Frank Holton & Co. was the largest employer in the City of Elkhorn. Wanting an outdoor gathering space for his community and opportunity for his “Frank Holton Band” to perform for their families and friends, Holton sought an innovative design to showcase his beautiful products and bring folks to the Elkhorn town square.

Holton read a Popular Mechanics magazine article about a young architect named George Pheby who had been tasked by the City of Phoenix to do just that one of their parks. It was lauded as a masterclass in acoustic design, explained by Pheby’s free-standing interior frame of redwood and spruce wood on the interior of the stage that created similar properties as the interior of fine stringed instruments. The band shell interior was described as a hollow-body wood resonator, and Pheby was selling plans for his design in the magazine to other interested communities. It should be noted that Pheby did not have a musical background and may have relied on the expertise of friend and Native American band director, Peter A. Venne, with this design as well.

Holton traveled south with a contingent to nearby Mt. Morris, Illinois, where residents had recently purchased the plans and constructed a Pheby-designed band shell, to see this concept in person. Holton and his team were so impressed, that a set of his own plans was purchased shortly thereafter and constructed in the Walworth County square in 1926. Holton himself funded $5,000 for the project, with an additional $1,000 given by the newly-formed Elkhorn Kiwanis Club (estd. 1922).

While definitive records can’t be found to indicate exactly how many sets of Pheby’s band shell plans were sold, we have confirmation that at least five were built in the United States (Phoenix, AZ, Norristown, PA, Mt. Morris, IL, Menomonee, WI, and Elkhorn, WI; one set of plans was also sold to a businessman in Christchurch, New Zealand, but there is no evidence of it ever being constructed.

One integral design modification to the Greek Revival exterior of the shell that the Elkhorn team understood was necessary to protect the wooden interior from the harsh Wisconsin winters was a tarpaulin cover. This may very be what has attributed to maintaining its original integrity for so long. While the other Pheby shells have since fallen into disrepair, succumbed to vandalism, and have had to be torn down or severely modified, the Elkhorn Band Shell has remained intact. The only significant change was a new foundation needed in 1962 when the band shell was moved to its new home west of town (now Sunset Park) to make way for the Government Center downtown. Only slight changes have been made over the years, such as sealing the rear windows, painting, new roof, and replacing the tarpaulin cover with a mechanical garage door in the 1990s.

What remains the same about the Elkhorn Band Shell is the hollow-body wooden resonators' incredible acoustical properties. Local lore to support it as an engineering marvel has spanned nearly 100 years: Variations of the same story can still be heard in the local Elkhorn diners today regarding the shell’s design, where workers dropped a hammer/nail on the stage floor during construction and the resonator amplified the sound so well that it could be heard from 100 feet away/across the square/ three blocks away, depending on who is telling the tale. Another anecdotal story describes students visiting from the Wisconsin School for the Deaf in nearby Delavan to “hear” a concert: They entered the back-of-the-house and placed their hands on the soundboard of the hollow-body resonator and were able to dance “in perfect time to the music…receiving their tempo from the vibrations.”

In 2024, a preliminary analysis by acoustic engineer Scott Reidel examined the design more closely and was able to back up Pheby’s design genius: The interior wooden wall behind the performers serves as a resonating-chamber or “resonator” and is akin to a cello, violin, or similar hollow-body wooden instrument. Pheby even added “air pockets”, which acoustical professionals call “tonal slots”, at the front ends of the resonator to complete the effect. Historic Preservation Engineer Neal Vogel of Restoric, LLC noted with particular interest that “while Pheby specified tonal woods, which were readily available in the West for construction, Elkhorn builders still adhered to those specifications and acquired the very same West Coast redwood and spruce as shown in the original plans.”

The band shell was listed on the US Department of the Interior’s “National Register of Historic Places” for Local Significance in 2012, recognizing its cultural importance for the City of Elkhorn and surrounding communities. With a grant received from the Jeffris Family Foundation Heartland Fund in 2024, the City was able to undertake a nine-month Historic Structure Report & Analysis of the band shell with Restoric, LLC. Upon this further architectural evaluation by Vogel and his team, with contributing assistance from historian Carol Cartwright, the structure was resubmitted to the Wisconsin State Historic Preservation Office for listing on the State’s Register of Historic Places and State-level Architectural Significance on the National Register. This request was unanimously approved by the State’s Historic Preservation Review Board in February 2024 and by the National Park Service in August 2025. Today, the Elkhorn Band Shell resides as the only band shell in the State of Wisconsin with this designation and is among just 21 listed on the National Register, alongside the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Daytona Beach Oceanfront Bandshell, and Naumburg Bandshell in New York, as one of the most architecturally significant pieces of acoustical engineering in United States history.