By Jared Ebersole in Video 10 Sep 2026

The Roof Arthur Ashe Stadium Couldn’t Carry

To shelter the US Open from rain, engineers built a vast, independent structure around Arthur Ashe Stadium, with foundations reaching deep beneath Queens.

Look up from the court at Arthur Ashe Stadium and the roof appears to belong to the building beneath it. Its enormous opening frames the sky; its steelwork follows the arena’s perimeter. Yet the apparent unity conceals the project’s essential trick: the stadium does not carry the roof. A separate structure supports it, allowing an outdoor arena to gain shelter without taking on the roof’s immense weight. The USTA described that independent support system when the roof debuted in 2016. US Open’s 2016 roof overview

That distinction solved a problem familiar to anyone who has watched tennis disappear behind a rain-delay graphic. From 2008 through 2012, wet weather pushed the US Open men’s singles final to Monday five years running. The tournament’s biggest concluding event had become difficult to keep on its intended day. When the $150 million roof arrived, it changed what organizers could promise about play on their principal court. US Open’s account of the roof’s debut

Where it is

Arthur Ashe Stadium, USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, New York.

The difficulty began with the existing building. Ashe opened in 1997 without provision for the roof that would eventually cover it. At the project’s August 2013 announcement, architect Matt Rossetti explained that his team had examined the stadium’s columns and footings to establish whether the existing structure could support an addition. That investigation ruled out the approach. Beneath the arena, poor soil further complicated the search for a workable design. USTA project announcement and design discussion

The ground carries a history that reaches far beyond tennis. Flushing Meadows was once marshland, later overwhelmed by industrial dumping. New York City Parks documents the ash heaps, including the towering mound called Mount Corona, that helped give F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby its landscape of ashes. Preparing the area for the 1939 World’s Fair involved an enormous earthmoving operation. The park’s transformation changed its surface and public identity, but that history remained relevant to the engineers building above it decades later. NYC Parks’ history of the fairgrounds

The solution was to give the roof its own route to the ground. Eight principal supports around the stadium would stand on substantial concrete foundations, each supported by approximately 20 piles extending 150 to 200 feet below the surface, according to Rossetti’s presentation. Large trusses would carry the roof overhead. The stadium could remain inside this new supporting structure, relieved of the responsibility of holding it up. USTA’s foundation and structural explanation

For spectators, those buried foundations are effectively invisible. Structurally, they are the heart of the project. Every roof needs a continuous path through which its weight reaches the earth. At Ashe, the designers created that path around the existing seating bowl. Thinking of the addition as a vast shelter built over another building makes its logic easier to see: the enclosure and the arena occupy the same space while their principal supports do different jobs.

The scale above ground is easier to appreciate. The USTA reported more than 6,500 tons of steel surrounding the stadium and an opening measuring 62,500 square feet. At 250 feet on each side, that opening leaves a substantial piece of sky visible. When completed, it was described by the tournament as the largest retractable roof opening in tennis. The two moving panels together weigh approximately two million pounds, yet can close in under seven minutes. US Open’s roof specifications

That combination of size and movement makes the roof an industrial machine as well as a building. Morgan Engineering, whose kinetic structures business supplied the operating system, explains that the mechanism draws on technology used in overhead cranes. Winches pull cables that tow the roof sections along their tracks. The familiar factory task of moving a heavy load becomes, here, the task of moving the ceiling above a tennis match. Morgan Engineering’s explanation of the mechanism

Pulling hard enough is only part of the challenge. Morgan describes controls that monitor position, brakes, motor temperatures, rail clamps and roof skew, along with the health of the communications network. Moving a broad structure along a curved path requires coordinated motion. One portion cannot simply advance independently of the rest. The graceful movement visible from the seats depends on machinery and controls continually accounting for what the roof is doing. Morgan Engineering’s control-system account

Building it required a different kind of coordination. Construction began after the 2013 US Open and proceeded between tournaments. Foundation work came first. The main steelwork followed between the 2014 and 2015 events, with moving components and the Teflon-coated fiberglass covering installed before the 2016 competition. The annual tournament therefore became a recurring deadline within a construction project spanning several seasons. US Open’s construction chronology

The covering also changed the environment inside. At the public demonstration on August 2, 2016, the USTA explained that a cooling system would operate with the roof closed to control heat and humidity. Keeping rain off the court required more than bringing two panels together. Once the opening was sealed, the air beneath it became another condition the building had to manage. US Open’s unveiling report

The first competitive test arrived on August 31, 2016. At 10:38 p.m., during that evening’s play, the roof was called into service for the first time in a regulation match. Years of studies, deep foundations, steel erection and mechanical testing had reached the moment spectators actually needed: rain outside, tennis able to continue inside. US Open’s retrospective on the first closure

Ashe’s roof rewards a second look because its most consequential feature is easy to miss. The moving panels attract attention, but the quieter achievement is the independent structure carrying them. A stadium that could not support the desired addition gained it through a new set of foundations and supports, carefully fitted around what was already there. The next time the sky closes above the court, the engineering story continues all the way down beneath Queens.