What do the Ontario Community Hall and the Houston Astrodome have in common?

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Does it look familiar? Above is the Ontario Community Hall’s ceiling, and below is a Lamella roof at the Thomas Jefferson School in suburban St. Louis.

Gustel Kiewitt (1902-1964) was German immigrant who became an accomplished American architect, specializing in designing commerical buildings with Lamella roofs. Kiewitt’s daughter, who lives in St. Louis, speculates he may have had a hand in the design of the Ontario Community Hall.

Kitchen improvements are well underway, but more needs to be done. Donations would be greatly appreciated.

One of Kiewitt’s largest projects was the St Louis Arena, later known as the Checkerdome. In 1928, the National Dairy Show offered the city the opportunity to become the permanent location for its annual two-week meeting of dairymen and their prize animals.
With no public funds available, a group of businessmen raised private funding for what was projected as a $2 million building. The National Exposition Company in charge of the project hired Gustel R. Kiewitt as architect and the Boaz-Kiel Construction Company as general contractor.
Kiewitt’s design called for a Lamella roof supported by 20 cantilever steel trusses, eliminating the need for view-obscuring internal support pillars. The Lamella design consisted of Douglas fir ribs that were 3.75 inches thick, 17.5 inches wide and 15 feet long, fitted together diagonally and giving the appearance of fish scales.
The huge structure was completed in 1929, just more than a year after construction began. At 476 feet long and 276 feet wide, it was behind only Madison Square Garden as the largest indoor entertainment space in the country. A 13-story building could have been erected inside of it.
The structure was demolished by a controlled implosion in 1999.

By KAREN PARKER | County Line Editor

It’s hard to believe, but, yes, the Houston Astrodome, which holds 68,000 people, and the Ontario Community Hall, which accommodates a few hundred comfortably, do have a similarity. They both have what is known as a Lamella roof.

Yes, if you have ever sat in the Ontario Community Hall and gazed at the ceiling and asked yourself, “What the heck is that?” the County Line has discovered there is far more to the hall that we had ever thought. So much more that we now have evidence that it is important not only to preserve it, but also perhaps apply for acceptance on the National Register of Historic Places.

As most of our readers know, the Ontario Community Hall has been at the center of village life longer than most of us can recall. It arrived in the village in 1937, trucked piece by piece from La Crosse, where it was known as the Silver Palace Dance Pavilion. It was doomed to go underwater when the Army Corps of Engineer widened a channel in the Mississippi River.

The Ontario Village Board agreed to tap into a building fund and reportedly bought the building from the Army Corps for $500. They then hired four carpenters to dismantle the building. The many small pieces of the roof were numbered to aid in its reconstruction.

Soon public funds were drained, but the people were hooked on the project, and a special referendum was held to levy an additional tax to pay for the project. It passed by a huge majority, and with the aid of volunteer laborers and truckers, the hall was reassembled in Ontario in short order. To the best of our knowledge, the last resident who had worked on the project was Leo Woods, who passed away in 2012 at age 97.

On Feb. 2, 1938, the Vernon County Broadcaster reported, “The people of Ontario are rejoicing over the fact that there new community building is nearing completion.”

The writer noted that the building would be used for athletics, physical education, plays, forensics and other events that called for more space than what was available at the school.

“Proof of the fact that all of the people in and around Ontario are justly proud and deeply interested was shown by the large crowd who were out to witness the first basketball game played in the hall. An estimated crowd of 400 persons attended the game.”

No one knows how many events have been held in the hall since that first basketball game in 1938 or how many have spun around the floor roller skating. High school graduations were once held there, as were social events of all sorts, from wedding dances to concerts to public meetings. Many married couples recall that their relationships began at the hall, and more than a few overflow-crowd funerals were held there.

We don’t know how old the building was when Ontario purchased it, but we do know it has been a central part of the village for 77 years. We also know that nothing lasts forever without maintenance and repair, and the Ontario Community Hall could definitely use some TLC.

This is not the first time the hall has been at risk. In the 1980s, the board toyed with the idea of tearing it down and building a new facility. That prospect so incited the ire of the late Jim Bavetta and others that a campaign was launched to save the hall. Successful fundraisers and public sentiment swayed the board’s opinion, and a number of improvements were made to the hall. But that effort was nearly 30 years ago, and the needs never seem to end in an aging structure.

The 1950s kitchen is greatly in need of a major upgrade. Two years ago, the village was able to secure a $15,000 grant from Vernon County. The money came from the $1.2 million the county receives in Ho-Chunk gaming funds. With an additional $5,000 from the village and another $5,000 from the Ontario Community Club, an addition was added to the kitchen, nearly doubling its size. Although the new addition relieved the cramped quarters for food preparation, many things still need to be done. This year the village received another $15,000 from the county, which will easily be exhausted on new cabinets, new wiring, new sinks, sheetrock and other improvements. New appliances also are needed. None of this addresses the need for renovated bathrooms, which are out of date and need to be handicapped accessible.

The Ontario Community Club has been busy raising additional funds for the renovations but could use some help. If you have fond memories of the hall or would just like to see an architectural treasure preserved, donations are greatly appreciated.

Funds can be directed to Village of Ontario, Community Hall Renovation Project, P.O. Box 66, Ontario WI 54651.

Lamella roof: A history

The honeycomb pattern of the ceiling in the Ontario Community Hall has puzzled people for decades.

It is something that most folks have never seen, and for good reason. It is a rare example of an early 20th century architectural feature known as a “Lamella roof.”

Invented in Germany in 1908 by Friedrich Zollinger, the roof solved the nagging problem of creating large, clear spans without the use of supporting posts. It was readily apparent that the Lamella roof was extraordinarily useful in stadiums, dance halls, gymnasiums and even barns.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Lamella roof is defined as “a vaulted roof consisting of a crisscrossing pattern of parallel arches skewed with respect to the sides of the covered space, composed of relatively short members (lamellae) hinged together to form an interlocking network in a diamond pattern.”

The other advantage of the Lamella form was its lightness and ease of construction. The pre-cut timber sections, which are mitered on each end and curved on one edge, could be lifted into place and bolted together by two men without any heavy machinery.

It was 1925 before the idea caught on in this country. We owe that to Gustel Kiewitt, who emigrated from Germany in 1925. Educated at the University of Darmstadt and the University of Stuttgart, Kiewitt had extensive knowledge of the roof design and was one of two men who obtained the rights to build the Lamella-roofed structures.

In fact, he became what St. Louis Public Radio calls the “Johnny Appleseed” of the Lamella roof and can be connected to nearly every Lamella-roofed building throughout the Midwest from the late 1920s to the middle 1950s.

According to St. Louis Public Radio, “Kiewitt and the Lamella system received a grand introduction to St. Louis when, in 1925, Edward Busch Faust commissioned a barn for his son, Leicester Busch Faust, at Leicester Faust’s farm in Chesterfield. The elder Faust saw gold in the Lamella roof — a system that was both novel and useful — and he pushed for it to be used in building the Arena, a project of the National Exposition Co.”

That building was razed in 1999.

Although Kiewitt is best known for his commercial work, he also branched out into housing.

“To fill demand after World War II, he conceived an inexpensive modular design to utilize abundant construction materials of that time such as marine plywood, which he used for both the interior and exterior walls of the houses. Since it is estimated that 75 percent of our built environment has been constructed since World War II, innovative architecture such as Kiewitt’s modular design is significant,” reports the Society of Architectural Historians, Missouri Chapter.

Prior to his death in 1964, Kiewitt also was consulted during the construction of the Houston Astrodome. Completed in 1965, the dome construction was an adaptation of the Lamella concept. The monumental engineering challenge to determine whether the structure could withstand occasional hurricane gusts of 165 miles per hour in the Houston area was met by Kiewitt’s decision to have McDonnell Aircraft Company do wind tunnel tests on a one-eighth-inch scale model of the structure.

An example of the dome-shaped modification of the Lamella roof is the Silver Dome Ballroom, located five miles west of Neillsville, Wis., on Highway 10, and the skating rink in Eagle River, Wis. The ballroom was built by the Keller Brothers in 1933 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. The geodesic dome popularized in the 1970s is also a variation of the Lamella roof.

The Wisconsin State Historical Society also has a photo of a large barn being constructed near Viroqua in 1933. The builder reportedly was Kruse Lamella Lumber and Manufacturing Company, which appears to have been a business in Rochester, Minn.

In the ballroom’s application for the National Historic Registry, it is noted that at one time there were five ballrooms in Wisconsin using the Lamella-engineered roof. Only two were believed to be still standing. The Ontario Community Hall was not listed, suggesting it may be extremely rare.

The County Line was able to contact Kiewitt’s daughter by email, and she confirmed that the hall is certainly an example of a Lamella roof. The County Line hopes that is she is able to supply us with more information and that we will be able to determine when the building was constructed and the name of the builder.

Watch the County Line for as we continue to attempt to solve the mystery.

 

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