Inside Uline Arena, the iconic Washington sports venue transformed from Capitols home to crumbling parking lot

ULINE Arena has gone down in history as the site of The Beatles' first concert in the US on February 11, 1964, two days after the Fab Four's inaugural appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

The Washington, DC indoor venue was also where NBA legend Red Auerbach learned his trade as a coach with the Washington Capitols before he went on to have historic success with the Boston Celtics.

The 9,000-seat facility, named after local businessman Michel Uline, also held one of US president Dwight Eisenhower's inaugural balls in 1953, a speech by Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, and a series of sports events ranging from hockey to boxing and figure skating.

By the early 1970s, however, the brick masonry structure had fallen into obscurity after concerts were banned there following riots at a 1967 Temptations concert and the opening of the state-of-the-art Capital Centre in Landover in 1973.

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Such was the decline that in 1971, the renamed Washington Coliseum was used as a giant temporary holding cell for 1,200 protesters of the Vietnam War.

From 1994 to 2003, the graffiti-covered Coliseum served as a garbage transfer facility and it eventually found some use as a cavernous parking garage.

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It was a humbling fall from grace for the site of The Beatles' first concert in the US shortly after a hysteria-inducing appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

The Beatles played on a stage in the round, and the band rotated around throughout the performance so half the audience did not have to look at their backs the entire show.

Around 8,000 fans, most of whom were teenage girls, watched The Beatles perform a dozen songs, with tickets costing just $2.50.

"It was terrific. We'd been used to it in smaller doses. But in our minds, it's only right that it should get bigger," Sir Paul McCartney told the Washington Post.

"And where better for it than America, where everything is bigger? 

"It was very exciting, just having that many people – predominantly girls, all screaming."

It was a short set, lasting just 35 minutes, with the band opening with Roll Over Beethoven.

"I don't remember thinking we played particularly well," McCartney added. 

"But looking back, time has been very kind to us. It was a cool gig."

Fans also threw hundreds of hard jelly beans on stage after the band said in an interview that softer jelly babies were their favorite candy.

"In England, they're soft and always in the shape of babies," McCartney said. 

"What do you call them? Jelly beans. 

"They're hard. They stung, and we're playing in the round, and they're being thrown from everywhere. 

"It was very unsettling."

Among the audience was former US vice president Al Gore, who was a prep school student at the time.

"The acoustics in the arena combined with the absolute frenzy of enthusiasm made it virtually impossible to understand a single word that they sang," Gore said. 

"You had to listen carefully to get the general flow of the song, and of course everybody knew all the words prior to the concert. 

"We all loved their music, but clearly there were a lot of people in that crowd who loved it even more than I did because they couldn't stop screaming."

Shortly after a 50th anniversary reenactment of The Beatles concert was held in 2014, the Uline Arena was refurbished by developers in a $77million mixed-use project, which includes a flagship store for outdoors retailer REI and office space.

This move came after preservationists secured its status on the DC Historic Preservation Review Board’s official protection list and National Register of Historic Places after an attempt to tear the building down.