Location of the second Gewandhaus, Mendelssohn-Ufer

Thanks to growing visitor numbers from the middle of the 19th century onward, the old Gewandhaus Hall was no longer sufficient. A new concert hall was built in December 1884. Unlike the old Gewandhaus Hall, this second Gewandhaus did not belong to the city, but to the Gewandhaus Concert Directorate.

The Great Hall, which could accommodate 1,500 people, was highly praised for its architecture and acoustics. The chamber music hall had a capacity of about 500 seats. In 1892, a monument to Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was unveiled in front of the second Gewandhaus. During the Second World War, the building was bombed during an air raid. It remained a ruin until 1968, when it was demolished.

In 1947, Walter Arnold created a new Mendelssohn monument, which is today only a few metres from its original location, on the so-called Mendelssohn-Ufer of the reconstructed Pleißemühlgraben. The five steps symbolise five staff lines, and the wooden cubes represent the first notes of Mendelssohn's E minor Violin Concerto.