A convention center (American English; conference centre outside the USA) is a large building that is designed to hold a convention, where individuals and groups gather to promote and share common interests. Convention centers typically offer sufficient floor area to accommodate several thousand attendees. Very large venues, suitable for major trade shows, are sometimes known as exhibition centres. Convention centers typically have at least one auditorium and may also contain concert halls, lecture halls, meeting rooms, and conference rooms. Some large resort area hotels include a convention center.
1850 Bingley Hall (destroyed by fire in 1984), Birmingham, England
1851 The Crystal Palace (destroyed by fire in 1936), London, England
1855 Palais de l'Industrie (dismantled in 1897), Paris, France
1873 Alexandra Palace, London, England
1876 Memorial Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
1878 Exhibition Place, Toronto, Canada
1878 La Rural, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1879 Garden Palace (destroyed by fire in 1882), Sydney, Australia
1880 Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, Australia
1898 Aberdeen Pavilion, Ottawa, Canada
1898-1903 Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam, Netherlands
1900 Grand Palais, Paris, France
1909 Festhalle, Frankfurt, Germany
1912 McCormick Place, Chicago, Illinois, USA
1959 Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
1974 Kenyatta International Convention Centre, Nairobi, Kenya
1976 Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
1979 Internationales Congress Centrum, Berlin, Germany
1981 Moscone Center, San Francisco, California, USA
1988 Washington State Convention Center, Seattle, Washington, USA
1990 Colorado Convention Center, Denver, Colorado, USA
1993 Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
1997 Tokyo International Forum, Tokyo, Japan
2001 Bethlehem Convention Palace, Bethlehem, Palestina
2008 Raleigh Convention Center, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Convention center Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA