Reliant Astrodome

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Template:Infobox Stadium The Reliant Astrodome, formerly "the Astrodome", is a domed sports stadium, the first of its kind. It is located in Houston, Texas at Template:Coor d, and is part of the Reliant Park complex. It opened in 1965 as Harris County Domed Stadium and was nicknamed the "Eighth Wonder of the World". (A team owner is quoted as saying that the "rent for the Astrodome was the ninth".) Reliant Energy purchased naming rights to the building in 2000.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Teams who played there 1.2 Scoreboard 2 Recent history 3 Hurricane Katrina 4 External links

History

Major League Baseball expanded to Houston in 1962 with the Houston Colt .45s, who were later renamed the Astros. Houston's unpredictable subtropical weather made outdoor baseball difficult for players and spectators alike. Several baseball franchises had toyed with the idea of building enclosed, air-conditioned stadiums. Former Houston mayor Judge Roy Hofheinz claimed inspiration for what would eventually become the Astrodome when he was on a tour of Rome, where he learned that the builders of the ancient Colosseum installed giant velariums to shield spectators from the Roman sun. Image:IMG 9885.JPG The world's first domed stadium was conceived by Hofheinz, and designed by architects Hermon Lloyd & W.B. Morgan, and Wislon, Morris, Crain and Anderson. It was constructed by H.A. Lott, Inc. for Harris County, Texas. It stands 18 stories tall, covering 9½ acres. The dome is 710 feet in diameter and the ceiling is 208 feet above the playing surface, which itself sits 25 feet below street level. Despite innovations neccessitated by the novelty of the design (including the modest flattening of the supposed "hemispherical roof" to deal with environmentally-induced structural deformation; the use of a new paving process called "lime stabilzation" to deal with soil consistency issues and thereby facilitate paving; and the invention of a new artificial grass by Monsanto called AstroTurf to deal with sunlight issues inside the dome) the Dome was completed in November 1964, six months ahead of schedule.

When the Astrodome opened, it used a natural Bermuda grass playing surface. The dome's ceiling contained numerous clear plastic panes made of Lucite. Players quickly complained that glare coming off of the panes made it impossible for them to track fly balls, so all of the panes were painted over, which solved the glare problem but caused the grass to die from lack of sunlight. For a time, the Astros played on green-painted dirt. The permanent solution was to install a new type of artificial grass on the field, which became known as AstroTurf.

Teams who played there

In 1968, the American football team Houston Oilers moved into the Dome. Over the years, college basketball and football games, soccer matches, religious gatherings, and music concerts have been held at the stadium. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, one of the city's biggest annual events, was held at the Dome from 1966 until 2003.

The 1971 NCAA men's basketball Final Four was held at the Astrodome.

On September 20, 1973, the Astrodome played host to one of the most talked-about events in sports history: the famous "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match which pitted female star Billie Jean King against former men's Wimbledon champion Bobby Riggs. King defeated Riggs (who had taken on the role of a male chauvinist for the match) 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.

The 1968 and 1986 Major League Baseball All-Star Games were held here, as was the 1989 NBA All-Star Game.

The World Football League's Houston Texans called the stadium home for part of the 1974 season.

The Houston Gamblers of the USFL also played home games at the Astrodome.

The Astrodome was also home to the University of Houston's football team until Robertson Stadium on campus was renovated in 1998.

The Bluebonnet Bowl was played at the stadium from 1968 through 1984, and again in 1987.

The stadium was also home to the Houston Bowl (then known as the GalleryFurniture.com Bowl) in 2000 and 2001.

The Astrodome also hosted WWF WrestleMania X-Seven in 2001.

Scoreboard

The Astrodome was well-known for a four-story-tall scoreboard, composed of thousands of lightbulbs, that featured animations until its removal in the late 1980s. This loss was brought about by threats from Oilers owner Bud Adams to move his football team to Jacksonville, Florida unless stadium seating capacity was expanded. (Ironically, Jacksonville won an NFL expansion franchise in 1995.) The city buckled to his demands, and the scoreboard was removed and approximately 15,000 new seats installed to bring total capacity over 60,000. In 1989, four cylindrical columns were constructed outside the Dome, housing pedestrian ramps.

Recent history

Image:Reliant Stadium.jpg The 1992 Republican National Convention was held at the Astrodome in August of that year. The Astros accommodated the politicians by taking a month-long road trip.

The Astrodome began to show its age by the 1990s. Oilers owner Adams issued a new set of demands, this time for a completely new stadium, but the city of Houston refused to fund such a venture. After years of threats, Adams moved the team to Tennessee in 1996. Around that time the Astros also threatened to leave the city unless a new ballpark was built. Houstonians acquiesced this time, and the retractable-roofed Minute Maid Park was erected in downtown Houston in 2000.

One of the largest crowd in the Astrodome's history took place in 1995, when Tejano superstar Selena Quintanilla-Perez and her band Los Dinos performed for a sell-out crowd during the Houston Livestock and Rodeo Show at the Astrodome, attracting more than 64,000 fans. This was also to be Selena's final performance, as she was later shot to death on March 31, 1995 by her fan club president Yolanda Saldivar. This would be the Astrodome's largest crowd until WrestleMania X-Seven was held at the Astrodome in 2001, establishing a new all-time record for the facility at 67,925 fans .

The Astrodome was joined by a new neighbor in 2002, the retractable-roofed Reliant Stadium, which was built to house Houston's new NFL franchise, the Houston Texans.The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo moved to the new venue in 2003, leaving the Astrodome without any major tenants. The stadium is currently called the "lonely landmark" by Houstonians because hardly any well-known events take place there. The historic facility now hosts occasional concerts and high school football games. Although some Houstonians want the Reliant Astrodome demolished by 2009 or 2010, to be replaced by a large parking lot for the other structures of Reliant Park, city council has rejected that plan for environmental reasons. They reasoned that demolition of the Dome might damage the dense development that today closely surrounds it. (Also, being the world's first domed stadium, historic preservationists may also object to the landmark--though not included on the National Register of Historic Places--being demolished.)

Houston's plan to host the 2012 Olympic Games included renovating the Astrodome for use as an Olympic Stadium. Houston became one of the USOC's bid finalists, but the organization chose New York City as its candidate city; the Games ultimately were awarded to London by the IOC.

In 2005 Astrodome Redevelopment Corporation sought funding to convert the building into a "self-contained hotel", and the company will announce further plans in a letter-of-intent agreement with Harris County in January 2006.

Hurricane Katrina

Template:Katrina Image:Katrina-14637.jpg Image:Katrina-14524.jpg Image:Dome91305.jpg On August 31, 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Harris County Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management and the State of Louisiana came to an agreement to allow at least 25,000 evacuees from New Orleans, especially those that were sheltered in the Louisiana Superdome, to move to the Astrodome until they could return home. The evacuation began on September 1. All scheduled events for the final four months of 2005 at the Astrodome were cancelled. [1]. However, eventually officials declared that the Reliant Astrodome was full at 13,000 and could not accept additional hurricane evacuees from the disaster. Overflow evacuees were held in the surrounding Reliant Park complex including 3,000 at the Reliant Arena and 8,000 at the Reliant Center. No more evacuees were taken into the Astrodome. There was a full field hospital inside the Reliant Arena, which cares for the entire evacuee community.

The entire "Reliant City" (the Astrodome and surrounding athletic facilities) was scheduled to be emptied of evacuees by September 17, 2005. The Astrodome has no other current use, aside from a handful of conventions, and originally the Astrodome was planned to be used to house evacuees until December. However, the surrounding parking lots were needed for the first Houston Texans home game. Arrangements were made to help evacuees find apartments both in Houston and elsewhere in the United States. By September 16, 2005 the last of the evacuees living in the Astrodome had been moved out either to the neighboring Reliant Arena or to more permanent housing. As of September 20, 2005, the remaining evacuees were relocated to Arkansas due to Hurricane Rita.

External links

Template:Geolinks-US-buildingscalefr:Astrodome ja:アストロドーム sv:Reliant Astrodome