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Abstract:
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This dissertation investigates the modern American stadium from the late 1940s to the early 1980s , examining the ideologies that shaped these monumental buildings and the meanings people affixed to them . Stadiums were significant components of the modern landscape , frequently hosting massive audiences , costing tens of millions of public dollars , and uniquely symbolizing cities and their citizens’ civic spirit . Through interpretations of these stadiums’ architectural expression , spatial constitution , discursive construction , and visual representation , this study explores the ideological landscape of the modern United States , expands understandings of modern space , and examines what it meant to be “modern” throughout this period . A response to the old stadiums they replaced—largely masculine , inter -class , inter -racial , rambunctious places locked into run -down neighborhoods—new stadiums eliminated traditional and iconic sites of urban diversity , reconstituting sports spaces as modern , suburban , and technological . They re -gendered stadium space , integrating women into it as consumers and service workers . They re -classed stadium space , outfitting it with exclusive restaurants and private luxury boxes . They technologized stadium space , conspicuously loading it with exploding scoreboards and massive video screens . They re -racialized stadium space , relocating it from old ballparks adjacent dense African -American neighborhoods to open sites along freeways convenient to booming white suburbs or as anchors to clean -sweep downtown redevelopment . They fundamentally altered stadium experience , shifting emphasis from games on the field to entertainments and consumption opportunities around it . In doing all these things , modern stadiums materialized an ideological apparatus privileging a range of values and practices including gender distinction in mixed -gender settings , socio -economic and racial segregation , technological scientism , and consumption -oriented stimulation . Roy Hofheinz , the force behind the iconic Houston Astrodome’s planning and execution , fully understood the relationship of the material and the ideological ; as he put it , “You’ve got to have tangibles to sell intangibles .” To illustrate these points , this dissertation engages postwar plans for futuristic new stadiums from designers like Norman Bel Geddes and Buckminster Fuller ; the construction of new stadiums in the mid -1960s in New York , Houston , and St . Louis ; and the increasingly routinized modern stadium of the 1970s—a controversial expression of modern progress for some , modern artificiality for others . |