Hancock Place – Tiger Dome
Scenes of a basketball game between Hancock and Gateway Science Academy, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, at Hancock Place High School in St. Louis County.

Hancock Place – Tiger Dome

LEMAY, Mo. — Hancock Place’s new hexagon-shaped gymnasium attracted nation-wide attention when it opened in 1965.

The top floor has a 1200-seat dome-style gymnasium, featuring a self-supporting web lamella roof.

In the middle there is a cafeteria.

And an Olympic-size swimming pool was on the bottom floor. Was.

Scenes of a basketball game between Hancock and Gateway Science Academy, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, at Hancock Place High School in St. Louis County.

“The pool was filled in and converted to a gymnasium 20-25 years ago,” said Steve Kelly, Hancock’s athletics director.

The building even had the designation as a fallout shelter for the neighborhood in the height of the Cold War.

“The unique domed stricture has received much nation-wide publicity in trade and school publications,” says an article in the Naborhood Link News from Nov. 3, 1965. “It is constructed for use as a fall-out shelter after a study by Pearce and Pearce, Inc., the architects.”

The facility, now known as the Tiger Dome, cost $655,854.93 to build, according to the March 29, 1965, edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

A $1.5 million bond issue approved by voters in May 1962 approved the project in addition to other improvements, said a Post-Dispatch article on June 27, 1963.

Today, the gym is still a focal point of the St. Louis area basketball scene. Two-tiered seating and the unique design lamella domed roof make for an unmistakable setting.

It’s now known as the Tiger Dome.

An addition and renovation of the dome architected by Wm. B. Ittner Inc. was completed in 2013.

Scenes of a basketball game between Hancock and Gateway Science Academy, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, at Hancock Place High School in St. Louis County.
Scenes of a basketball game between Hancock and Gateway Science Academy, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, at Hancock Place High School in St. Louis County.

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