Skip to main content

Dorton Arena

Location: Raleigh, NC, USA
Date: 1952
Category:
Creator(s): Nowicki, Matthew , Dietrick, William Henley

The Dorton Arena was the first use of a cable-supported roof system in the world. Commissioned in 1949 by North Carolina State Fair manager J.S. Dorton, the new building was intended to be a livestock judging pavilion. Architect Matthew Nowicki (1910 - 1950) proposed a structure that included a pair of intersecting parabolic arches supported by slender columns around its perimeter with a network of wire cables that supported the saddle-shaped roof. When Nowicki was killed in a plane crash in Egypt in 1950, his mentor and friend, Raleigh architect William Henry Deitrick, took over the supervision of the detailed work of design and construction. The structural engineering firm Severud-Elstad-Krueger Consulting Engineers, headed by Fred Severud, served as structural engineering consultant to the project.

The Dorton Arena was the first indoor stadium designed entirely as a large column-free space. The final column-free area was 300 feet in diameter with 25,000 square feet of arena space. This design was possible due to the use of the revolutionary combination of compression ‘rings' and cables in tension to support the roof. The large superdomes which followed-such as the Houston Astrodome in 1965 and the Georgia Dome in 1992-can trace their beginnings back to the Dorton Arena.

 

CLAIM TO FAME

The Dorton Arena was the first permanent use of a cable-supported roof system in the world
Tags: Era: 1950-1959
Innovation designated by:
Dorton Arena
Courtesy Flickr/Justin Doub (CC BY 2.0)
Dorton Arena
Address:
4800-5162 Hillsborough St.
Raleigh, NC, USA

4800-5162 Hillsborough St.

We hope you enjoyed this essay.

Please support America's only magazine of the history of engineering and innovation, and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to Invention & Technology.

Donate

Stay informed - subscribe to our newsletter.
The subscriber's email address.