In 1915, the commissioners of South Park (Grant Park's predecessor) located a temporary wooden bandshell in the Park near Michigan and Congress Avenues. It hosted large events as well as band performances and remained in place for five or six years. In 1931, Cermak suggested free concerts to lift spirits of Chicagoans during the Great Depression. The Depression and the proliferation of new technological innovations such as records, radios and sound films led to a declining demand for live music and a shrinking job market for musicians. That year, as buildings were being built for the 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition, the Chicago Concert Band Association offered to organize a seventy-person concert band to give free summer concerts if the park commissioners would build a band shell that had electric lighting and dressing rooms. Construction on the wood and fiber E. V. Buchsbaum design began on a budget of $12,500 ($ in today's dollars), and the opening of free concerts commenced on August 24, 1931. Construction was completed in three weeks.