Singer Bowl
The Singer Bowl was the former name for a stadium in the northeastern United States, located in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in the New York City borough of Queens. It was an early example of naming rights in large venues. History. The stadium opened in 1964, built by the Singer Sewing Machine Company, and was donated for use at the It later hosted various Olympic trials and concerts, including the New York Rock Festival in 1968, a concert headlined by with as the opening act on August 2. Later in the month, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Big  Brother and the Holding Company (with Janis Joplin) were also part of the festival at the stadium. In the summer of 1972, professional boxing was held at the Singer Bowl. Some of the fighters who boxed there included heavyweight champion and future world champions Vito Antuofermo and Saoul Mamby. Other boxers of note that fought at the Singer Bowl in 1972 were Edwin Viruet, John Clohessy, Roy Edmonds, Eduardo Santiago. Tennis. 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 long rectangular stadium was renamed the Louis Armstrong Memorial Stadium in 1973 after a famous Corona resident, jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong. Heavily renovated in 1977, it reopened in 1978 as two venues, Louis Armstrong Stadium, which had significantly more seating than the original stadium, and the adjacent Grandstand. Both were part of the present-day USTA  National Tennis Center. When the USTA built Arthur Ashe Stadium next door in 1997, the largest tennis-only venue in the world, the seating capacity of Armstrong was reduced to be closer to its original format. It was demolished in October 2016 as part of the Billie Jean King Tennis Center renovation. References. Notes Further reading