22 Cornerstone Fall 2025 agchouston.org so they could enjoy the experience of watching afternoon and evening baseball games in an air-conditioned stadium from April through October.” The Astrodome project broke ground in January 1962, with construction led by Houston-based general contractor H.A. Lott, Inc. “Henry Alvin Lott was born in 1908 and grew up poor in Louisiana. Self-edu- cated, he went to work as a construction superintendent and ended up as part of Farnsworth and Chambers,” stated Kiley, whose experience with the Astro- dome is just a small portion of his vast knowledge of Houston’s construction industry. “Mr. Lott went on to start his own company and convinced the powers that be that he could build the Astrodome. He passed in 2006 and was a devout Baptist, committed lifelong learner and incredibly humble.” Developing the Dome Design Lott’s team partnered with Wilson, Morris, Crain & Anderson, the archi- tectural firm behind the design, but there were countless engineering obstacles to overcome. Right from the beginning, the challenges were just like the soon-to-be stadium itself — absolutely enormous. How would they create a roof over an outdoor playing field? Fortunately, the team tasked with finding solutions refused to quit. The primary challenge was simply the sheer scale of the proposed structure. The dome was to span 642 feet in diam- eter and rise 208 feet at its peak, large enough to enclose the entire field and a seating capacity of more than 66,000. No one had built a roof that size without interior columns before, so the engineers involved had to get creative. Ultimately, they settled on a steel lat- tice dome supported by a ring of 48 tow- ering concrete columns. The structure included 4,500 tons of steel and more than 3,000 tons of reinforcing bars. Engi- neers used radial symmetry and precise load balancing to ensure the dome would hold under its own weight. Everything had to be calculated to the inch, and with no precedents or examples to follow, failure was a constant threat that weighed heavily on everyone’s shoulders. Permanent Temporary Solutions It wasn’t just the dome that forced cre- ative solutions, though. Several unfore- seen complications throughout the course of the build necessitated on-the- fly solutions, and, of course, the teams rose to the occasion with Texas-sized solutions. “An interesting thing that Mr. Lott thought of was to put jacks under all of the temporary shoring so that the per- manent structure could be in place when the temporary shoring was lowered,” added Charlie Nelson, who worked at H.A. Lott, Inc. during the construction of the Astrodome. “It was told to me that when the temporary shoring was lowered, the permanent structure was not supporting itself.” So, the engineers at Walter P. Moore (WPM), the structural engineering firm in charge of the Astrodome, went back to the drawing board and decided that The Astrodome became a symbol of Texas ambition and was a fitting reflection of the state’s reputation that everything is bigger in Texas.
