By Ken Belson
Branford Marsalis has traveled the world over, but one trip back to his hometown, New Orleans, still stands out. He was visiting from Los Angeles, where he was the bandleader on “The Tonight Show” in the early 1990s, and was invited on a local talk show that was being broadcast from the Superdome.
Marsalis, now 64, knew the building well. An avid sports and music fan, he saw many Saints football and Jazz basketball games there, as well as concerts and other events. He also sold programs at Saints games. The joy of those days hit him when he walked into the stadium.
“As soon as I saw the field, I got overcome with all this emotion and reflexively bought season tickets,” Marsalis said. “Back when it opened, there were very few domed stadiums, and none of them looked as good as this one. It was a great place to be.”
Marsalis couldn’t use his season tickets because he was living in California, so he gave them to his brother and bandmates. But his impulse purchase was a reminder of how the building, which turns 50 this year, and what it represents still has a hold on him and many others with connections to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
For the past half century, the Superdome has been best known as a sports venue. It is the home of the Saints, and also a host for Super Bowls, Final Fours, title bouts and other sports including high school and college football, baseball and soccer. Tom Brady won his first Super Bowl there, and it was where a freshman named Michael Jordan made a jump shot that clinched a national title for the North Carolina men’s basketball team.
But the Superdome, with its distinctive top, covers more than 13 acres and has a quarter-million square feet of space that has been used for conventions, weddings, proms and hundreds of other events. The building has welcomed Mardi Gras parades, graduations, the Republican National Convention and Pope John Paul II. In the words of Doug Thornton, its longtime manager, the Superdome is “the city’s living room.”
On Sunday, the Superdome will transform into an international venue when it hosts its record eighth Super Bowl, providing the backdrop when a global audience tunes in to watch the Kansas City Chiefs play the Philadelphia Eagles (6:30 p.m. ET, CBS, Fox, Fox Deportes). The building will look different from how it did during its last Super Bowl in 2013, when half the stadium lights went dark during the third quarter, leading to a 34-minute stoppage. Over the past five years, the building has undergone a $560 million renovation to add wider concourses, new escalators, better kitchens and suites, and more natural light.
It was the latest makeover of a building that is inextricably linked to the arrival of the Saints in 1967, and the ambitions of a city that was eager to no longer be dismissed as colorfully antiquated.
With its size and Space Age look, the Superdome dominates the skyline and is a beacon to travelers flying or driving into the city. Yet its curved white roof and champagne bronze exterior look little like the pastel-colored town homes that are the city’s signature.
The building was designed to impress. Dave Dixon, a businessperson who spearheaded the city’s effort to land a pro football team in the 1960s, wanted a stadium that would hold events but also lift New Orleans out of the shadow of Atlanta, Houston and other larger Southern cities.
Dixon lobbied Pete Rozelle, then the commissioner of the NFL, for a new team. In 1966, New Orleans was granted a franchise on All Saints’ Day around the same time and began play in 1967 in Tulane Stadium.
The goal was to open the Superdome for the 1972 NFL season, but construction, paid for with bonds backed by hotel taxes, didn’t begin until 1971. The stadium opened in August 1975, too late to host Super Bowl IX, which the NFL moved to Tulane. The cost quadrupled to $163 million and included Mardi Grass, an artificial turf.
The Saints were dreadful in their early years, and moving to the Superdome changed little.
Despite the Saints’ losing, the team attracted fans from across the Gulf Coast, and New Orleans became a frequent host for the Super Bowl because it was compact, teeming with bars and restaurants, and over time had enough convention space and hotel rooms.
“The Super Bowl grew up with the city,” said Jim Steeg, who ran the Super Bowl for the NFL from 1979 to 2005.
The Superdome hosted the first indoor Super Bowl in 1978, and it was the first venue to include suites. New Orleans also hosted the first Super Bowl after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
But the Superdome, a quarter-century old then, no longer had the revenue-generating amenities newer stadiums featured. The state and the team ultimately chose to renovate the Superdome, and the plans were largely finished when Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed the city in 2005.
With New Orleans flooded, the Superdome, with a large hole in its roof, became a refuge for tens of thousands of people.
In the opening minutes of the Saints’ return to the Superdome in 2006, defensive back Steve Gleason blocked an Atlanta Falcons punt that was recovered for a touchdown, the first score in a lopsided win. Fans inside and outside hugged and cried. The team, the stadium and the city were back.
On Sunday, when fans file into the Super Bowl, many of them will pass a statue outside the building commemorating Gleason’s play, another moment when the Superdome helped remind the world of New Orleans’ resilience.