History
The first retractable roof sports venue was the now-demolished Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Constructed in 1961 for the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, the arena was home to minor-league and NCAA D-1 basketball and ice hockey teams before becoming the home of the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins in 1967, as well as hosting over a dozen regular season NBA games in the 1960s and 1970s. The arena's dome-shaped roof covered 170,000 square feet (16,000 m2) and was made up of 8 equal segments constructed from close to 3,000 tons of steel, in which six segments could retract underneath the remaining two, supported by a 260-foot (79 m) long exterior cantilevered arm.
Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Quebec was slated to be the first outdoor retractable roof stadium at its debut for the 1976 Summer Olympic Games. However, plagued by construction problems, the roof was not installed until 1987, and was not retractable until 1988. Even then, movement of the roof was impossible in high wind conditions, and technical problems plagued the facility. A permanent, fixed roof was installed in 1998. By contrast, the Rogers Centre (formerly known as SkyDome) in Toronto, Ontario had a fully functional retractable roof at its debut in 1989.
Read more about this topic: Retractable Roof
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