Not A Flying Saucer

The Assembly Hall is a large dome-shaped indoor arena, located in Champaign, Illinois, and is part of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.The Hall hosts games for the Fighting Illini men's and women's basketball teams, and doubles as a performance and event center.

The Assembly Hall opened on March 2, 1963 and continues to attract attention for its design and construction. Four hundred feet across, it at one time was one of only two edge-supported domes in the world. The roof is supported by 614 miles (988 km) of one-quarter inch steel wire wrapped at the base of the dome under intensive pressure.

As of April 2, 2008, the Assembly Hall was added to the annual top ten endangered Illinois historic places list, as published by Landmarks Illinois, a non-profit historic preservation group. The only other endangered athletic site on the list is the Cubs' Wrigley Field in Chicago.