长春市体育馆

Changchun Gymnasium stands at 2999 Renmin Avenue in Chaoyang District, Changchun. The municipal party committee and government decided to build it in 1955, construction started in 1956 and the building opened in November 1957. It was designed by Ge Ruliang, a Tongji University professor who had worked on the Great Hall of the People and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution and who ranks among the founders of Chinese sports architecture. The building faces east, is shaped in plan like the character gong, rises four storeys and covers 13,650 square metres. The competition hall spans 42 metres, is 60 metres long and 26 metres high, and seats 4,299. It is one of the earliest large gymnasiums completed in Jilin after 1949, one of the ten landmark Changchun buildings of the early People's Republic, and since 28 August 2014 a protected provincial cultural relic. The competition hall is flanked by two 500-square-metre practice halls with a clear height of eight metres, and the second and third floors at the rear hold rooms for gymnastics, wushu and table tennis. The main hall stages basketball, volleyball, badminton, table tennis, gymnastics, acrobatics, wushu, weightlifting, boxing and wrestling, and has also hosted concerts and film screenings; the old electric meters and wave-score boards remain at the top of both sides. For decades it was the home court of the Jilin Northeast Tigers basketball team; after the CBA fixtures moved to the Wuhuan Gymnasium the old hall shifted to training, mass fitness and mid-sized events, yet fans still call it Changchun's permanent home court. It sits on the central stretch of Renmin Avenue, within walking distance of Jiefang Dalu and Dongbei Shida stations on Metro Line 1, with dense bus services along the avenue and a direct metro ride from Changchun railway station.