In Defense of Louis Armstrong Stadium

Already in the second week of the US Open Tennis.com decided to pen a love letter to Louis Armstrong Stadium, the second-largest stadium inside the National Tennis Center. The stadium has its quirks:

The seats are cramped, the wind swirls inside, and there are no architectural or decorative touches to please the eye. Designed and built in minimalist, modernist 1964, it’s just a concrete bowl with enormous steel light fixtures towering over it… Armstrong has what city planners would now call “a circulation problem.” Outside of Rome, it may be the most restless tennis court in the world.

Louis Armstrong was once slated for demolition, but now plans call for a revamp, expansion, and a new retractable roof. (Because the stadium was built on a landfill, it never received a roof due to concerns that the soil couldn’t support the weight.) Former United States Tennis Association president Slew Hester first spotted the stadium back in 1977, when it was abandoned and covered with snow. The arena hadn’t been in use since the 1964 World’s Fair. The USTA had outgrown the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, so the move was made to Flushing Meadows. The rush to prepare the site for the US Open “explains why there were no bells and whistles in the design, as well as the jerry-rigged quality of its construction.” The appeal, of course, rests in the nostaliga of the building. As the author puts it, “Armstrong has a strange appeal, one that makes me wonder if memories and nostalgia don’t ultimately trump all questions of aesthetics and taste.”

A Palace Fit for Queens [Tennis.com]
Photo by wallyg