Not long after Kurt Masur was appointed the Philharmonic’s music director, he got the idea that the Park Avenue Armory, which could hold almost 5,000 people, could be the perfect place for “something like the BBC Proms concerts in London, which attract many thousands of listeners to the cavernous Royal Albert Hall every summer. […] An official of the Philharmonic deputized to scout the terrain, he added, had gone back to report: ‘This is not a concert hall. This is a dump.'”