Ani DiFranco Opened the Hall She Helped Save

When Ani DiFranco played two sold-out concerts at Asbury Hall in September 2007, she was opening a room she had helped bring back to life. DiFranco and Righteous Babe’s Scot Fisher were central to the preservation and restoration of the former Buffalo church that became Babeville.

The building’s return happened in stages. Babeville’s timeline records Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center and Righteous Babe Records occupying their spaces in 2006. Asbury Hall’s inauguration followed the next year, with DiFranco onstage.

Those concerts linked the building’s new purpose directly to the musician who had helped secure its future. The hall was more than a hometown booking for her. Its opening was the public result of years spent turning a threatened historic building into a working home for the arts.

Explore Asbury Hall at Babeville on CouchLot.

Sources: babevillebuffalo.com; cbsnews.com.