History
Edward L. Bader, mayor of Atlantic City from 1924–1929, led the initiative to acquire the land for Convention Hall, now Boardwalk Hall, and construction was underway at the time of his death. The hall, designed by the architectural firm Lockwood Greene, was built in 1926.
The main hall measures 456 feet (139 m) and 310 feet (94 m) wide. The barrel vault ceiling is 137 feet (42 m) high. Ten pairs of three-hinged steel trusses support this unusually large clear span, there are no supporting columns. Each pair of trusses spans 350 feet (110 m) and weighs 220 short tons (200 t). The trusses are tied to the frame columns to allow the building to flex slightly with wind and ground pressure. The barrel ceiling consists of aluminum painted tiles. It is decorated to resemble Roman bath tiles, and extends over 196,000 square feet (18,200 m2).
Read more about this topic: Boardwalk Hall
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)