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Odell, the architect of the 1952 structure was a Concord, N.C. native. He came to Charlotte in 1939 and set up a one-man architectural office after training at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and Duke and Cornell Universities. According to Charlotte historian Dan Morrill, Odell had nothing but disdain for the architecture he observed when he arrived in Charlotte in the late 1930s. “There was nothing here,” said Odell, “that illustrated the honesty of stone as stone, steel as steel, glass as glass. Everybody was still wallowing in the Colonial heritage.” It was the Charlotte Coliseum that gave Odell international fame. At the time, it was the largest unsupported dome in the world.
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