Historical Overview
T
he Georgia Dome opened September 6, 1992 in Atlanta,
Georgia. It was demolished and replaced
by the new Mercedes Benz stadium in 2017.
- At the time of construction, it was considered the largest
domed stadium in the world. The Georgia Dome was located on 9.19 acres of land;
it had a height of 271 ft, its length was 746 ft, its width of 607 ft, and a
total floor area of 102,150 square feet.
- The Dome was primarily designed for professional football
games, but it hosted several concerts, conventions, and prominent events
including two Super Bowl games (1994, 2001) and the 1996 Olympic games.
Although the Georgia Dome was synonymous with the Atlanta Falcons, more basketball games than football games were played in the facility.
Besides the many NCAA basketball games played there, the Atlanta Hawks spent
two seasons in the dome while nearby Philips Arena (later State Farm Arena) was
under construction. The largest crowd in National Basketball Association
history—62,046 fans—visited the Georgia Dome on March 27, 1998, when Michael
Jordan played his final game as a Chicago Bull in Atlanta against the Hawks.
Jordan scored 34 points to lead his team to an eighty-nine to seventy-four
victory.
The cost to build the Georgia Dome was approximately $214
million. The construction of the Dome was planned in order to attract popular
conventions to the city and to ensure that the Atlanta Falcons would remain in
Atlanta. The Atlanta Falcons played in this stadium for twenty-five years.
Although the construction of the Georgia
Dome was supported by many in business and government, including then mayor,
Andrew Young, its placement displaced local communities, which were mostly
low-income citizens.
Traveling north from Clayton State University onto
Interstate 75, one of the major highways leading to the city of Atlanta, was
full of traffic on a Saturday mid-morning. It would behoove visitors to take
the public transit system when visiting downtown Atlanta.
The drive is a scenic one.
Colorful, and sometimes jovial, billboards adorn the highway with
advertisements from the GA Lottery to pest control companies vying for your
business. Along the way, you will pass the former stadium where the Atlanta
Braves used to play. At the time it was named Turner Field, however, Georgia
State University is the current owner of that venue as the Braves opted for a
state-of-the-art facility in Cobb County.
Atlanta has changed quite a bit over the years, especially
since the Dome was demolished. On the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. and
Northside Dr. is where the new Mercedes Benz Stadium stands. Some say that the Atlanta Falcons will probably
never have another winning season because there is a curse placed on the new
stadium for displacing two historical churches that were once neighbors to the
Georgia Dome.
In order to get to the location of the historic marker, you
will need to access the newly constructed Home Depot Backyard. The entrance is located right off Northside
Drive. The marker can be reached from Northside Drive NW north of
Magnolia Street NW, on the right when traveling north. This location is
accessible by foot at the northwest corner of the Home Depot Backyard venue. The
Home Depot Backyard is an impressive 11-acre greenspace that provides parking
and tailgating opportunities for Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United fans. This is also where the Georgia Dome once
stood. There is 15 feet of compacted
debris from the implosion of the Dome right underneath this greenspace.
Insight and Take-Aways
It was interesting to learn that an entire neighborhood
called Lightning was demolished to make way for the Georgia Dome to make way
for the Benz. The Lightning neighborhood hosted church revivals in the ’30s and
moonshine alleys in the ’40s; an industrial boom in the ’50s and the Civil Rights
Movement in the ’60s. Although it was surrounded by prestigious institutions,
from Georgia Tech to the historically black colleges of the Atlanta University
Center. Lightning was among the city’s last communities to get paved roads and
electric power.
💰Financing for the Georgia Dome was a combination of private
and public funding.
Works Cited
Blau, M. (2022). Bitter Southerner. Retrieved
from
https://bittersoutherner.com/lightning-the-atlanta-community-lost-to-super-bowl-dreams
Georgia Historical Society. (n.d.). Georgia
Historical Society. Retrieved from
https://georgiahistory.com/ghmi_marker_updated/georgia-dome/
Starrs, C. (n.d.). "Georgia Dome." New
Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified May 10, 2019. . Retrieved from
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/sports-outdoor-recreation/georgia-dome/
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