Mellon Arena Retractable Roof

Six of the sections could fold underneath two in 2 minutes making the civic arena the world s first major indoor sports stadium with a retractable roof.

Mellon arena retractable roof.

Rip civic arena all items pictures songs etc go to their respective owners. It also played host to the. At the time of its completion pittsburgh s mellon arena was hailed as an engineering marvel. Six of the sections could fold underneath two in two and one half minutes making the mellon arena the world s first major indoor sports stadium with a retractable roof.

No freestanding retractable steel dome had ever been attempted in america and for years the mellon arena stood as the only extant example. The mellon arena was the first retractable dome and it was the largest dome in the world at the time it was built. The arena which covered 170 000 square feet had the first retractable roof ever on a major sports venue in the world. The steel dome weighs almost four thousand tons and has a diameter of a little over four hundred feet.

A change in the plans to make the roof retractable drove the price tag to 21 7 million. It was constructed with just shy of 3 000 tons of steel manufactured in the city of pittsburgh. Construction of the civic arena began on april 25 1958. No copyright infrengement intended.

Construction of the civic auditorium. It kept that record until the houston astrodome was built three years later. Built in the early 1960s for pittsburgh s civic light opera it was the first stadium arena to have a retractable roof and was the home of the penguins from 1967 to 2010. A total of 42 trucks mounted on 78 wheels 30 of which were individually driven supported and moved the six moveable sections.

Originally budgeted to cost 19 million it would take 40 months to construct.