Top 10 Convention Center Facts
Walter E. Washington Convention Center is the second largest building in the nation's capital.
The Center hosted the American Idol Auditions in 2004 and Oprah Winfrey's "Live Your Best Life Tour" in 2005.
In 2008, the Center hosted its first wedding and bar mitzvah.
The Center is among the top 10 largest convention centers in the country.
The building has a 38,000 ton steel super-structure or enough steel for seven Eiffel Towers.
The column-free ballroom is one of the largest ballrooms on the East Coast that can seat up to 5,000 people comfortably.
Dirt tracks and ramps are brought into the Convention Center every year so that attendees can test-drive production model Jeeps during the Jeep Challenge.
With its unique on-site power plant, the Center has enough power to support a town of 7,500 people and have enough back-up energy resources to ensure continued operations.
The 2.3 square foot building covers six city blocks and is as long as two Washington Monuments laid end-to-end.
At the time, the excavation site of the new Convention Center was the largest in the Western Hemisphere, where more than two million tons of earth were moved.