Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center

The Dallas Memorial Auditorium was originally constructed in 1957 near the intersection of Canton and Akard Streets. In the 1970s, the center was expanded and renamed the Dallas Convention Center; the expansion was designed by local architects Omniplan. The center was expanded again in 1984 and once more in 1994, when Dallas Area Rapid Transit constructed the Convention Center Station underneath the west-wing of the facility, connecting it to the Red and Blue light rail lines. The most-recent addition to the facility was completed in 2002. Together with Reunion Arena, it was an emergency shelter for thousands of Hurricane Katrina refugees in September 2005. The Auditorium is no longer used for concerts or very many other events. The center is over 2,000,000 square feet  in size and contains over 1,000,000 square feet of exhibit space. The largest contiguous exhibit-space in the structure is 726,726 square feet. A 203,000-square-foot column-free exhibit hall in the center is the largest of its kind in the United States. It is annually used for the Dallas Auto Show.