The New York Times reports the Eighth Wonder of the World may not be long for this earth:

The Eighth Wonder of the World, as the Astrodome was nicknamed, with its 200-foot-tall roof and nine-acre footprint, became the most important, distinctive and influential stadium ever built in the United States.

It gave us domed, all-purpose stadiums and artificial turf and expansive scoreboards. It gave us seminal respect for women’s sports when Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs at tennis in 1973. It gave us the inventor of the end zone dance in 1969, Elmo Wright of the University of Houston. It gave us the first prime-time national television audience for a regular-season college basketball game, with the famed 1968 meeting between Houston and U.C.L.A.

So it was despairing to hear that the vacant Astrodome might be torn down and its site paved over as Houston prepares to host the 2017 Super Bowl. Demolition would be a failure of civic imagination, a betrayal of Houston’s greatness as a city of swaggering ambition, of dreamers who dispensed with zoning laws and any restraint on possibility. …

James Glassman, a Houston preservationist, calls the Astrodome the city’s Eiffel Tower and the “physical manifestation of Houston’s soul.” New York could afford to tear down old Yankee Stadium, Glassman said, because the city had hundreds of other signature landmarks. Not Houston. Along with oil, NASA and the pioneering heart surgeons Michael E. DeBakey and Denton A. Cooley, the technological marvel of the Astrodome put a young, yearning city on the global map. …

The Astrodome was built to solve a vexing conundrum: How to bring major league baseball to a city where the temperature could match the league leaders in runs batted in? …

The Astrodome was the brainchild of Roy Hofheinz, a Barnumesque former mayor of Houston and county judge. He kept a stadium apartment that featured a putting green, a shooting gallery, a puppet theater and a bowling alley. A tour guide once described the décor to Sports Illustrated as “early whorehouse.” In Hofheinz’s view, invention was nothing without flamboyance.

Mickey Mantle hit the first home run at the Astrodome in an exhibition game, causing the scoreboard to flash “Tilt.” Judy Garland, the Supremes, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson played concerts there. Muhammad Ali retained his heavyweight title. Evel Knievel jumped 13 cars on his motorcycle.

The Republicans nominated President George H. W. Bush for re-election there in 1992. Robert Altman directed a movie called “Brewster McCloud” in the Astrodome. In 1986, the Mets and the Astros played 16 marathon innings in what was then the longest postseason baseball game. In 2005, a magnanimous civic gesture provided shelter for thousands of evacuees after Hurricane Katrina. …

Demolition “would symbolize that we’ve just decided to quit,” said Ryan Slattery, whose master’s thesis in architecture at the University of Houston offers a different alternative.

Slattery’s plan, which has gained traction, involves a vision of green space. He would strip the Astrodome to its steel skeleton, evoking the Eiffel Tower of sport, and install a park. It could be used for football tailgating, livestock exhibitions, recreational sports. Other ideas have been floated through the years, some more realistic than others: music pavilion, casino, movie studio, hotel, museum, shopping mall, indoor ski resort, amusement park.

All private proposals for the Astrodome are due by June 10 to the Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation, which oversees the stadium.

The Astrodome was the first of its kind domed football/baseball stadium. It was also among the first of its kind as a multipurpose stadium. Previously football teams that didn’t have their own stadiums played in baseball stadiums — among others, the Detroit Lions in Tiger Stadium, the New York Giants in the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium, the Chicago Bears in Wrigley Field (really), and, of course, the Green Bay Packers part of the season in Milwaukee County Stadium. About half of football fans in such stadium arrangements had good seats; the rest did not. The multipurpose stadium — usually round, but sometimes square, like Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia — at least had football fans facing the right places, although their seats were well away from the field, since a baseball field is nearly twice the size of a football field.

The Astrodome led the world in ostentatious home-team celebrations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg1ApY8niNk

It was also, most regrettably, the place where artificial turf reared its ugly head. The Astrodome originally had glass panels so grass could grow. However, baseball players kept missing the ball against the roof, so the glass was painted over, and the grass died.

The Astrodome was indeed the site of some amazing events …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BuIWf6MnvQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC5KHvRujcg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRvIIus3rcs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrLCIByjOzo

… though the Astrodome never hosted a World Series (which was the Astros’ fault) or a Super Bowl, the latter because the Astrodome seated only 50,000.

It’s a bit ironic that the Astrodome was replaced by two stadiums, Minute Maid Park for the Astros and Reliant Stadium for the Texans after the Oilers moved to Tennessee. Both stadiums feature retractable roofs, so that fans can experience the outdoors on nice days, but be protected from the bad days. The retractable roof saved baseball in Milwaukee, because the Brewers (and the Diamondbacks and Marlins) no longer lose money on days where games are called off. They can also market games to farther-away fans, who are guaranteed that if they buy tickets, the game will be played that night.

In retrospect, the Astrodome perhaps should have been refitted for basketball when the NBA’s Rockets tired of The Summit. (It was replaced by the Toyota Center, while the Summit is now … a megachurch.) Given the fact that arena footprints have ballooned over the decades, you’d think they could have reconfigured the Astrodome for basketball within its dimensions.

On the one hand, a building’s lifespan is defined by its utility. When a building can’t be used anymore, it’s time for it to go. Still, the Astrodome’s eventual demise won’t be a happy event.