Singer Bowl

Coordinates: 40°45′03.4″N 73°50′43.8″W / 40.750944°N 73.845500°W

Entrance during the 1964 New York World's Fair

The Singer Bowl is a stadium that formerly stood in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, in the New York City borough of Queens. Singer Bowl became an early example of naming rights in large venues.

The stadium was built for events during the 1964 World's Fair, also hosting various Olympic trials and concerts over the years, including a 1968 concert headlined by The Doors with The Who as the opening act. In the summer of 1972, professional boxing was held at the Singer Bowl. Some of the fighters who boxed at the Singer Bowl were former Heavyweight Champion Floyd Patterson and future world champions Vito Antuofermo and Saoul Mamby. Other boxers of note that boxed at the Singer Bowl in 1972 were Edwin Viruet, John Clohessy, Roy Edmonds, Eduardo Santiago and others.[1]

In the early 1970s, the United States Tennis Association was looking for a new place to host the U.S. Open as relations with the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, which had hosted the tournament, were breaking down. The USTA was initially unable to find a sufficient site, but the association's incoming president, W.E. Hester saw the old Singer Bowl from the window of an airplane flying into LaGuardia Airport. The old, long rectangular stadium was renamed the Louis Armstrong Memorial Stadium after a famous Corona resident, jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong.[1]

It was heavily renovated in 1977 and then divided into two venues, becoming Louis Armstrong Stadium and the adjacent Grandstand. Both are part of the present-day USTA National Tennis Center.[1]

References

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Belson, Ken (9 September 2012). "Armstrong, Back When It Wasn’t Tennis Rocking the House". New York Times. Retrieved 9 December 2014.

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