Curtis Hixon Hall

Coordinates: 27°56′57″N 82°27′43″W / 27.94917°N 82.46194°W / 27.94917; -82.46194

Brand-new Curtis Hixon Hall, 1965

Curtis Hixon Hall was an indoor sports arena, convention center, concert venue, and special events center which was located at 600 Ashley Drive along the Hillsborough River in downtown Tampa, Florida. It opened in 1965, and was the primary concert, indoor sports, and civic gathering place for the city of Tampa for about twenty years. The construction of more specialized facilities around town in the early 1980s greatly reduced the number of events at Curtis Hixon Hall, and the opening of the much larger Tampa Convention Center in 1990 made it obsolete.

Curtis Hixon Hall was demolished in 1993, and the land was converted into a public park. The park was redesigned and incorporated into the Tampa Riverwalk in 2010, and the facility's former footprint is now home to the Tampa Museum of Art, the Glazer Children’s Museum, and the northern portions of Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park.

Construction

Curtis Hixon Hall was planned and built in the early 1960s during the administration of Tampa mayor Nick Nuccio, who pushed for the construction of many public works projects around town.^[1] It was named for Curtis Hixon, the mayor of Tampa from 1943 until he died while still in office in 1956.^[2] Local architect Norman Six designed the uniquely shaped building in a modified Googie architecture style.^[3] Construction of the 62,000 square feet (5,800 m²) facility cost approximately $5 million and was mostly financed by municipal bonds issued by the city of Tampa. It was dedicated on January 23, 1965.^[4]

Events

Curtis Hixon Hall could be reconfigured and subdivided to accommodate many different events with a maximum capacity of about 8000.^[4][5] It hosted concerts and sports, conventions and trade shows, large community events such as New Year's Eve dances and Gasparilla-related festivities, and political events, such as a large 1968 campaign rally for presidential candidate Richard Nixon.^[4][6]

Sports

Curtis Hixon Hall was the site of a wide variety of sporting events. The first event in the new facility was a boxing card held on February 15, 1965,^[7] and it hosted many subsequent boxing and wrestling cards throughout its lifetime, including a nationally televised 1971 light heavyweight championship bout between Bob Foster and Ray Anderson.^[8] Other notable fighters appearing at Curtis Hixon Hall included Earnie Shavers, Emile Griffith, José "King" Roman, Vicente Rondón, and Maurice Watkins.^[9]

Curtis Hixon Hall also hosted many basketball games. It was the first home court of the University of South Florida's basketball teams and the ABA's Floridians, and it was also used for high school basketball games and tournaments.

Music

Curtis Hixon Hall was Tampa's primary concert venue from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s, with only a handful of the biggest acts playing at much larger Tampa Stadium. Many of the top musical performers of the era played at Curtis Hixon Hall, including Bob Dylan (both solo and as part of the Rolling Thunder Revue^[10]), David Bowie, The Who, Yes, The Eagles, Led Zeppelin, KISS, Grateful Dead, The Wailers, Ozzy Osbourne, Rush and Cat Stevens, among many others. Notable shows included:

• Jimi Hendrix played Curtis Hixon Hall twice in 1968, on August 16 and November 23.^[11] In between those dates, The Jimi Hendrix Experience released their #1 charting album Electric Ladyland.
• Janis Joplin was arrested by the Tampa Police for "obscenity" while playing a show with B.B. King and others in the hall on November 16, 1969.^[12]
• Duane Allman made one of only two public performances with Eric Clapton and Derek and the Dominos in the hall on December 1, 1970.
• Elvis Presley played Curtis Hixon Hall in 1977, just months before his death.^[13]
• The J. Geils Band headlined a show at the Hall in 1982. The opening act was a little-known band from Ireland called U2, who were in the midst of their first American tour.

Decline and demolition

Curtis Hixon Hall was considered small and outdated by the mid-1980s and was relegated to hosting smaller events such as small trade shows and local events such as high school graduations while most major concerts shifted to places such as the USF Sun Dome (which opened in 1980) and the nearby restored Tampa Theater.

When the much larger Tampa Convention Center opened in 1990 and Tampa began making plans to build a new downtown sports arena (the Amalie Arena, then known as the Ice Palace, which opened in 1996), city leaders agreed Curtis Hixon Hall had outlived its usefulness. Mayor Sandy Freedman's administration decided to tear down the building and replace it with Curtis Hixon Park. Demolition of the facility began in 1993 and the park was dedicated in 1995. Aquamarine-colored tiles from the hall were set into each bench at the park.

The site was redeveloped again in the late 2000s to integrate the area into the city's Riverwalk project. A new Tampa Museum of Art and the Glazer Children's Museum opened in 2010 on the footprint of Curtis Hixon Hall, while the open space immediately to the south became a redesigned Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park.

References