Mid-Century Arenas: Memorial Coliseum

The emerging interdisciplinary field of Arena Studies focuses on the dwindling global supply of modernist multipurpose arenas—an overlooked subject spanning the fields of historic preservation, architecture, architectural history, engineering, preservation technology, industrial archeology, urban studies, city and regional planning, landscape planning and environmental history. After World War II, arena builders began to utilize a variety of new technologies and modern building materials to enclose large-scale urban, suburban and rural arenas. Innovative technologies were combined with cutting-edge craftsmanship to create a revolutionary new aesthetic of form-altering functionalism. Early arenas were established as public structures in the heart of the urban fabric offering unique and profitable opportunities for long-term future success. However, Arena Studies is an emerging field of study and currently suffers from a lack of scholarly research, resulting in typological confusion. General and pervasive misidentification and misclassification has greatly hindered the efforts of conservationists to rehabilitate, restore and repurpose these undervalued community resources. A key element for successful conservation is an understanding of the adaptability of these structures in material composition, plan, and function. Mid-Century arenas provide its urban enviornment with enduring historic value, and the Memorial Coliseum showcases the architectural qualities of form-altering functionalism.

 When completed in 1960, Memorical Coliseum, a flat-roofed square "box", measuring 360 linear feet per side, 100 feet in height, and part of a larger 30-acre area, was a technological feat of engineering and operation unrivaled by any other large civic structure and a fully-articulated example of International-Style Modernism. The Coliseum's weight is supported by four cruciform-shaped, 70-foot high reinforced concrete columns, 240 feet apart in one direction and 270 feet in the other. At the column pinnacle, "steel hemispheres," the first used in arena construction, support the steel roof trusses. The Building is the only large-scale public arena glass-walled structure of the mid-century retaining its original design, materials, workmanship, highly urban context, and original relationship to nearby geographic features such as the Willamette River.

A special thank you to Matthew Hayes for contributing to this posting.