Louis Armstrong Stadium is a tennis stadium of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and one of the venues of the U.S. Open. Armstrong was the main stadium before Arthur Ashe Stadium opened in 1997, and is now the No. 2 stadium. It is named after the noted jazz musician Louis Armstrong, who lived nearby until his death in 1971.
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Original stadium
The stadium was originally built as the Singer Bowl for the 1964 New York World's Fair, and hosted special events and concerts afterwards. In the early 1970s, the United States Tennis Association was looking for a new place to host the U.S. Open as relations with the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, which had hosted the tournament, were breaking down. The USTA was initially unable to find a sufficient site, but the association's incoming president, W.E. Hester saw the old Singer Bowl from the window of an airplane flying into LaGuardia Airport. The old, long rectangular stadium was heavily renovated and divided into two venues, becoming the square Louis Armstrong Stadium, with the remaining third becoming the attached Grandstand, the third largest stadium at the US Open, with a seating capacity of about 6,000.
In 1997, the stadium was replaced as the Open's primary venue by Arthur Ashe Stadium. Armstrong Stadium was renovated again, with the top tiers of seating being removed. The stadium held close to 18,000 at its peak, but this was reduced to around 10,200 with the renovation, which also added a brick facade to match that of Ashe Stadium.
The stadium was demolished in October 2016.
Future stadium
A new 14,000-seat Louis Armstrong Stadium will open for the 2018 US Open . This new stadium will also have a retractable roof, the largest of its kind among the No. 2 stadiums at the Grand Slams. On each side of the stadium there will be façades that are covered with terra cotta louvers, optimally positioned to keep rain out, yet porous to maintain natural ventilation. Designers say the terra cotta material contextually relates to the traditional brick buildings on the site while using the material in a new way. For the 2017 tournament, while construction is still ongoing on the new Louis Armstrong Stadium, a temporary 8,800-seat stadium will be built on the site of the demolished ticket office and East Gate entrance, on Parking Lot B, close to the boardwalk ramp to the subway and LIRR trains.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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