ATLANTA STADIUM & OMNI ARENA

33893-D

Tough "Where's Waldo" showing an aerial of the Omni Sports Arena....with Atlanta Stadium looming in the upper right background!

ATLANTA STADIUM:  Atlanta Braves (MLB) (1966-1996) Atlanta Falcons (NFL) (1966-1991) Atlanta Chiefs (NASL) (1967-1969), (1971-1972), (1979-1981) Atlanta Crackers (AAA) (1965)

Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, often shortened to "Fulton County Stadium," was a multi-use stadium that formerly stood in Atlanta, Georgia. Completed in a then-record 50 weeks for $18 million, it opened in the spring of 1965 as Atlanta Stadium. It was intended as the home of the soon-to-be-relocating Braves, but court battles kept the team in Milwaukee as a lame duck for a year. So the new stadium had a lame duck of its own for that first season: the Atlanta Crackers of the International League, whose previous home had been Ponce de Leon Park. In its first year it also hosted Atlanta's only Beatles concert, August 18, 1965. In 1966, both the NL's transplanted Braves and the NFL's expansion Atlanta Falcons moved in. In 1967, the Atlanta Chiefs of the National Professional Soccer League (re-formed as the North American Soccer League in 1968) began the first of five seasons played at the stadium. In a move intended to acknowledge the financial contributions of the taxpayers of Fulton County, the stadium's name was changed to the hyphenated Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium in 1976, the same year that Ted Turner purchased the Braves. The Falcons moved to the Georgia Dome in 1992, while the Braves had to wait until the Olympic Stadium from the 1996 Summer Olympics was transformed into Turner Field to move out at the beginning of the 1997 season. The stadium sat 60,606 for football and 52,007 for baseball. The baseball competition for the 1996 Summer Olympics was held at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.

OMNI SPORTS ARENA:  Atlanta Flames (NHL) (1972-1980) Atlanta Hawks (NBA) (1972-1997) Atlanta Chiefs (NASL Indoors) (1979-1981) Democratic National Convention (1988) Atlanta Attack (AISA/NPSL) (1989-1991) Atlanta Knights (IHL) (1992-1996) Atlanta Fire Ants (RHI) (1994)

The Omni Coliseum, usually called The Omni, from the Latin for "all," or "every," was an indoor arena located in Atlanta, Georgia. Completed in 1972, the arena seated 16,378 for basketball and 15,278 for ice hockey. It was part of the Omni Complex, now known as the CNN Center. The only remaining reminder is the scoreboard from the Omni that now hangs in the pavilion of the Philips Arena.

The Omni was home to the NBA Atlanta Hawks from 1972–1997, the NHL Atlanta Flames from 1972–1980 (now the Calgary Flames), and the IHL Atlanta Knights (1992-1996). The Knights were the only pro team to win a championship in the building by winning the Turner Cup in 1994. The arena also hosted the 1977 NCAA Final Four, won by Marquette University over North Carolina in what was Warriors' (their nickname at the time) coach Al McGuire's last game, one SEC and three ACC men's basketball tournaments, the 1978 NBA All-Star Game, the 1993 NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four, and the volleyball matches for the 1996 Summer Olympics. The Flames have since been replaced by the Atlanta Thrashers, who began play in 1999 after the Omni was demolished and Philips Arena was built.

Unused 4" x 6" continental size chrome.

Dist. by APS