Goodyear Airdock

About this property

The Goodyear Airdock is an airship construction and storage hangar in Akron, Ohio. At its completion in 1929, it was the largest building in the world without interior supports. The building has a unique shape which has been described as "half a silkworm's cocoon." It is 1,175 feet (358 m) long, 325 feet (99 m) wide, and 211 feet (64 m) high, supported by 13 steel arches. There is 364,000 square feet (34 000 m2) of unobstructed floor space; an area larger than 8 football fields side-by-side. The airdock has a volume of 55 million cubic feet (~1.5 million cubic meters). A control tower and radio aerial sit at its northeast end. At each end of the building are two semi-spherical doors that each weigh 600 tons (544 000 kg). At the top, the doors are fastened by hollow forged pins 17 inches (43 cm) in diameter and six feet (1.8 m) long. The doors roll on 40 wheels along specially designed curved railroad tracks, each powered by an individual power plant that can open the doors in about 5 minutes. The airdock is so large that temperature changes within the structure can be very different from that on the outside of the structure. To accommodate these fluctuations, which could cause structural damage, a row of 12 windows 100 feet (30 m) off the ground was installed. Furthermore, the entire structure is mounted on rollers to compensate for expansion or contraction resulting from temperature changes. When the humidity is high in the Airdock, a sudden change in temperature causes condensation. This condensation falls in a mist, creating the illusion of rain, according to the designer. In 1929, Goodyear Zeppelin Corporation, later Goodyear Aerospace, sought a structure in which "lighter-than-air" ships (later known as airships, dirigibles, and blimps) could be constructed. The company commissioned Karl Arnstein of Akron, Ohio, whose design was inspired by the blueprints of the first aerodynamic-shaped airship hangar, built in 1913 in Dresden, Germany. Construction took place from April 20 to November 25, 1929, at a cost of $2.2 million (equivalent to $31.55 million in 2024). The first two airships to be constructed and launched at the airdock were USS Akron, in 1931, and its sister ship, USS Macon. When World War II broke out, enclosed production areas were desperately needed, and the airdock was used for building airships. The last airship built in the airdock was the U.S. Navy's ZPG-3W in 1960. The building later housed the photographic division of the Goodyear Aerospace Corporation. In 1980, the Goodyear Airdock was designated a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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