University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Scholarship at Penn Libraries Penn Libraries 2007 Architecture for Community and Spectacle: The Roofed Arena in North America, 1853-1968 William B. Keller University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/library_papers Part of the American Art and Architecture Commons, and the Architecture Commons Recommended Citation Keller, W. B. (2007). Architecture for Community and Spectacle: The Roofed Arena in North America, 1853-1968. Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/library_papers/88 This dissertation was submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/library_papers/88 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Architecture for Community and Spectacle: The Roofed Arena in North America, 1853-1968 Abstract This dissertation provides the first treatment of the origins and development of the roofed arena in the United States and Canada. Supported by archival resources of graphics and text, and informed by direct contact with arena architects, design and operations staff, this study examines the arena as a place for spectacle within the larger environments of city and campus. The arena's site, massing, and design revealed the expectations of its sponsorship. The arena's internal configuration of roofed seating bowl, floor, portals, and passages was a purposeful arrangement intended to accommodate attendees and manage their movement through architectural space. The first chapter focuses on the transmission to the nineteenth century, via the architecture of theater, circus, and other spaces of public assembly, of the Greek and Roman hippodrome oval for accommodation of multiple kinds of revenue-generating activities situated within a circular, elliptical, or rectilinear seating bowl. The significance of the Royal Albert Hall, London, as the conceptual model for the presentation of modern indoor spectacle is recognized. But within the context of the growth or urban centers and the expansion of commercial leisure, Stanford White's Madison Square Garden, New York, is documented as the principal formal model. White's facility, a hippodrome within a rectangular industrial shed, whose impact was amplified by the communications media that disseminated its image and the reports of its spectacle, generated successors on a continental scale. The research method identified buildings, sought to find eler vant information, and fixed the buildings along a time line. Populated with enough examples, the time sequence yields affinities and clarifies differences, making possible useful generalizations about site and design in context. Across the time period considered, enclosure evolved from arched and pitched forms, and thin-shell experiments, toward the anti-industrial dome and drum. The emergence of tensile solutions allowed roof support to act as a design element as well as engineering. But by the end of the 1960s, circular and ovoid buildings receded in favor of the operationally more efficientectilinear r footprint covered by a flat truss or space frame. Exteriors of brick and stone became complex fields of concrete, glass, and multiple forms of metal. Over the long term, internal treatment of attendee space emphasized presentation of finished surface. This dissertation identifies those formal architectural attributes that carried the arena's programmatic objectives. It examines the emergence of the commercial, mercantile arena; higher education's recognition of the capacity of the architectural fabric of arenas to support institutional growth; and municipalities' use of the form to project government-defined civic alues.v The chronological narrative recognizes the intensity of concurrent strands of development between the World Wars and concludes by noting arena managements' increasing interest in building commercial destinations for attendees outside the seating bowl. Finally, the work establishes the role of the arena in large-scale repurposing of urban land in the 1960s. The Appendix is an extensive census of the large roofed arenas built in North America between 1853 and 1968. It provides the name of the facility, dates of design and opening, architect, type of siting, and configuration of building envelope. The Appendix introduces distinctions useful for analysis. Component siting, in contrast to independent siting, indicates placement of the arena within a system of buildings of associated purpose. Centroidal positioning indicates a building's occupation at the functional center of mass. Building envelope--with pitched or arched roof or other kind of enclosure--operates with siting as another indicator of sponsors' Intent. By assembling and reading the evidence of site, design, and operation, this paper ventures an approach to understanding the place of the roofed arena in the North American urban landscape. It is hoped that this work will invite and assist investigation into related issues, e.g., the architectural profession's approach to arena projects and, particularly, the commercial archaeology and human geography of the arena's interior zones. Keywords architecture, community, roofed arena, North America Disciplines American Art and Architecture | Architecture Comments This dissertation was submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History. This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/library_papers/88 ARCHITECTURE FOR COMMUNITY AND SPECTACLE: THE ROOFED ARENA IN NORTH AMERICA, 1853-1968 by William Bradford Keller A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History Spring 2007 Copyright 2007 William Bradford Keller All Rights Reserved ARCHITECTURE FOR COMMUNITY AND SPECTACLE: THE ROOFED ARENA IN NORTH AMERICA, 1853-1968 by William Bradford Keller Approved:_____________________________________________________ Bernard Herman, Ph. D. Chair of the Department of Art History Approved:_____________________________________________________ Thomas Mark Apple, Ph. D. Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences Approved:_____________________________________________________ Carolyn A. Thoroughgood, Ph. D. Vice Provost for Research and Graduate Studies I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed:_________________________________________________________________ Damie Stillman, Ph. D. Member of dissertation committee I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed:_________________________________________________________________ Bernard Herman, Ph. D. Member of dissertation committee I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed:_________________________________________________________________ David L. Ames, Ph. D. Member of dissertation committee I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed:___________________________________________________________ David B. Brownlee, Ph. D. Member of dissertation committee I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed:___________________________________________________________ Steven A. Riess, Ph. D. Member of dissertation committee ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The subject of this work developed from a paper prepared for a seminar led by Professor Damie Stillman. I am indebted to Professor Stillman for his help, always generously offered. I also thank each of the other members of my committee: Professors David Ames, David Brownlee, Bernard Herman, and Steven Riess. In addition, I would like to recognize the following scholars for the personal encouragement and inspiration provided during my graduate education and the preparation of this work: Christiane Andersson, Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, James Beck, Terry Belanger, David Brandenberger, Jeffrey Brooks, Jeffrey Cohen, Wayne Craven, Katia Dianina, Ann Gibson, Howard Gillette, Jr., William Homer, John Dixon Hunt, Herbert Kessler, Kezia Knauer, Richard Longstreth, Barksdale Maynard, Jerrold Moore, Lawrence Nees, Linda Pellecchia, Larry Silver, David Stone, George Thomas, and Franklin Toker. Library administrators at Yale, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania were supportive throughout, and I would like specifically to thank Scott Bennett, Donald Engley, Sandra Kerbel, Robert Krall, Virginia Massey-Burzio, James Neal, and Carton Rogers. I thank David Powrie for his reflections on designing for Eero Saarinen’s Yale v hockey rink and for Roche Dinkeloo’s New Haven Coliseum. I am also grateful to Dahlen