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Stadiums
Kingdome
By Wikipedia
The Kingdome, officially known as the "King County Domed
Stadium", and often referred to as simply "The Dome", was
the world's first — and only — multi-purpose concrete domed stadium,
which was owned and operated by King County, Washington, located at the
north end of Seattle's Industrial District, just south of Pioneer Square.
The building was completed in 1976 on reclaimed tideflat land formerly
occupied by the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway's freight yards.
At
a glance...
KINGDOME
Facility
statistics
Location
201
South King Street
Seattle, Washington
Broke
ground
November
2, 1972
Opened
March
27, 1976
Closed
January
9, 2000
Demolished
March
26, 2000
Replaced
Sick's
Stadium
Replaced
by
Safeco
Field (Mariners, 2000)
Qwest Field (Seahawks, 2000)
1977:
Left Field - 315 ft
Left-Center - 375 ft
Center Field - 405 ft
Right-Center - 375 ft
Right Field - 315 ft
Backstop - 63 ft
1991:
Left Field - 331 ft
Left-Center - 376 ft
Center Field - 405 ft
Right-Center - 352 ft
Right Field - 312 ft
Backstop - 63 ft
The Kingdome was home to NBA championship games, Boeing
and Microsoft company meetings, a baseball team that failed to make the
playoffs its first 20 years and a football team that, until their last
year in the building, had gone longer than any other team in the NFL
without appearing in the playoffs ('89-98).
The most notorious event in the stadium's history took place on July
19, 1994, when four waterlogged ceiling tiles collapsed in the vacant
stadium just hours before a scheduled Seattle Mariners game. The root
cause of this was the stadium's poorly designed concrete roof, which by
1993 was leaking badly. A plan to repair the roof involved stripping the
original exterior sealant and pressure washing the exterior. This pressure
washing resulted in seepage through the concrete roof, ultimately leading
to the interior ceiling's collapse. The Mariners were forced to play the
last 15 home games of the 1994 strike-shortened season on the road.
Repairing the roof ultimately cost $50 million and motivated plans to
replace the stadium.
In 1997 plans were finalized to construct two new stadiums in Seattle,
Qwest Field and Safeco Field. These two stadiums, future homes of the
Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Mariners respectively, rendered the Kingdome
useless and guaranteed its demise.
Rest in Pieces
The stadium was demolished by implosion (sent to "Kingdome
Come", as it were) on March 26, 2000 in the first live event ever
covered by ESPN Classic (it was also cybercast), and set a world record
for the largest implosion of a concrete building. The Kingdome might also
hold a record as the first major stadium to be imploded before it was
actually fully paid for.
To most people, the Kingdome has gone down in history as "the
ugliest sports arena ever built." It is also believed to be the first
domed stadium in the United States to ever be demolished. Qwest Field, the
home of the National Football League's Seattle Seahawks, now occupies the
site, as do the Seahawks, just as they had when the Kingdome still stood.
Safeco Field, the Mariners' home park, sits adjacent to Qwest Field.
Safeco Field has a retractable roof while Qwest Field's roof covers 70
percent of the seats.
Primary
research by Jim Herdman & David Vincent
Courtesy of Retrosheet.
Besides the Mariners and Seahawks, the stadium also hosted the National
Basketball Association's Seattle SuperSonics for a number of years. The
Kingdome's first sporting event was a game between the North American
Soccer League's New York Cosmos and Seattle Sounders on April 25, 1976,
with 58,218 fans in attendance. The NCAA Final Four was held three times
at the Kingdome - in 1984, when Georgetown defeated the University of
Houston, in 1989 when Michigan beat Seton Hall in overtime, and in 1995
when UCLA won their first championship since the retirement of legendary
coach John Wooden, defeating Arkansas.
The 'Dome was also host to an NFL Pro Bowl (1977), a Major League
All-Star Game (1979) and an NBA All-Star Game (1979). Numerous rock
concerts were held in the cavernous venue, including two Rolling Stones
concerts on October 14 and 15, 1981 that attracted crowds of 69,132 and
68,028.
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Stadiums
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