Kingdome

A Shell Over Seattle

The thing that made the Kingdome itself was overhead. The roof was the world's largest thin-shell concrete dome when it was built — a circle 660 feet across, rising 250 feet above the playing field. Bob Sowder of Naramore, Bain, Brady & Johanson and Jack Christiansen of Skilling, Helle, Christiansen & Robertson led a design team that worked under strict financial constraints, and King County voters had approved $40 million in bonds toward a total construction cost of $67 million. The dome officially opened in 1976 and hosted its first regular-season Mariners game on April 6, 1977 — a 7-0 loss to the California Angels before a sellout crowd of 57,762, with Diego Segui on the mound and Jose Baez collecting the franchise's first hit.

The neighborhood pushed back before a seat was filled. Residents and business owners in the International District and Pioneer Square raised concerns about traffic, parking, noise, and the prospect of community displacement. The stadium went up in their neighborhood anyway, and it stood there until the demolition charges of March 2000.

Built for Football, Played Baseball

The Kingdome never quite fit the game it housed. Upper-deck seats sat as far as 617 feet from home plate, and many fans in the 300-level outfield seats could not see parts of right and center field — the stadium was built primarily for football. In 1982, a 23-foot wall in right field, nicknamed the "Walla Walla," was added to improve the park's baseball dimensions. The building did what it could with what it had.

On October 8, 1995, in the rubber game of the ALDS, 57,411 fans watched the Mariners defeat the New York Yankees 6-5 in 11 innings. Edgar Martinez doubled to left in the bottom of the 11th, scoring Joey Cora and Ken Griffey Jr. and sending Seattle to its first ALCS. The roof was 250 feet above all of it. A May 1996 earthquake interrupted a game between the Mariners and Cleveland Indians during a pitching change after an Edgar Martinez home run; the building was inspected, found undamaged, and the game was finished the next evening.

The final MLB game at the Kingdome was played on June 27, 1999, with the Mariners beating the Texas Rangers 5-2. Ken Griffey Jr. hit the venue's last home run that day. The dome is gone now. The roof that spanned 660 feet of Seattle air does not stand anywhere.

Reporting: MLB.com, HistoryLink.org, Seattle.gov City Archives, Wikipedia. Park data: MLB StatsAPI and Retrosheet, via the Fever engine.