The largest tennis stadium in the world at nine at night in the first week of September: the roof open to the sky, twenty three thousand people in the bowl, a plane on its way down to LaGuardia, and two players trading ground strokes on the blue court while the wave goes round. The New Yorkers hang courtside on the wall at the foot of the lower bowl, where the sponsor boards would be, lit by the same lights as the match.
Arthur Ashe Stadium opened on August 25, 1997 at the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, Queens, designed by Rossetti at a cost of about 254 million dollars. With 23,771 seats it is the largest tennis stadium in the world. A retractable roof of two 800 ton fabric panels was completed in 2016 as part of a 550 million dollar renovation. It is named for Arthur Ashe, who won the first US Open in 1968, the first in which professionals could compete.
Source · Arthur Ashe Stadium, Wikipedia ↗
The 1997 bowl by Rossetti with its 23,771 seats, the 2016 retractable roof and its octagonal truss ring, the electric blue court inside the lines and green outside, the net and the chair umpire, line judges and ball kids, the two big screens, the light ring under the roof, and the approach path to LaGuardia overhead. Mood: deuce, under the open roof. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.