Assembly Hall (Champaign)
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
The Assembly Hall is a huge dome-shaped indoor arena located in Champaign, Illinois, and is part of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Hall hosts basketball games, and doubles as a performance and event center. Through 2003, perhaps its best-known non-sporting use was as the main venue for the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's Urbana missions conference, but the event outgrew Assembly Hall, and future Urbana conferences will be in St. Louis.
The Assembly Hall opened on March 2, 1963 and continues to attract attention for its design and construction. Four hundred feet across, it at one time was one of only two edge-supported domes in the world. The roof is supported by 614 miles of one-quarter inch steel wire wrapped at the base of the dome under intensive pressure. The architect was Max Abramovitz, a distinguished University of Illinois alumnus.
The largest Illinois arena outside of The United Center in Chicago, Assembly Hall has nearly 16,000 permanent seats, but when portable chairs are placed on the floor for an in-the-round performance there is potential of up to 17,200 depending on the size of the stage.
Prior to Assembly Hall, the basketball team played at Kenney Gym.
External links
- Official site (http://www.uofiassemblyhall.com)
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| The Campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | ||
|---|---|---|
| Assembly Hall • Atkins Tennis Center • Champaign • College of Engineering • Kenney Gym • Memorial Stadium • NCSA • Urbana • Willard Airport |
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Categories: US buildings and structures stubs | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus | College basketball venues | Illinois sports
