A Squash Court Hosted the Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project was the code name for the federally funded, United States research program to develop an atomic bomb. 

The project was led by Enrico Fermi, Italy's greatest physicist in modern times, and University of Chicago physicist Arthur Compton. Both Fermi and Compton were Nobel Prize recipients.

The team of scientists they led worked on a squash court beneath the long since dismantled west stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.

The squash court was the only convenient, large space available on the university campus for the team of scientists to build a "nuclear pile."

The result of their work was the first successful, self-sustaining, chain reaction initiating the controlled release of nuclear energy. Simply stated, it was the first nuclear reactor. 

Immediately after the successful test in 1942, the entire team moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico where they would ultimately conduct, on July 16, 1945, the first successful detonation of an atomic weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico. 

The U.S. wasted no time in using the new technology. On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped "Little Boy," a uranium bomb nicknamed after Franklin Roosevelt, on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later on August 9, 1945, the U.S. dropped "Fat Man," a plutonium bomb nicknamed for Winston Churchill, on Nagasaki, Japan.

On August 15th, a month after the New Mexican test bomb was detonated, Japan's Emperor Hirohito announced their surrender.  

 Earlier articles discussing the squash court connection to the Manhattan Project:

AtomicArchive.com: The First Pile 
The Economist: "From Squash Court to Submarine"
Vanity Fair Squash Blog "The Most Important Squash Court Ever"
Squash Blog Life: "The First Nuclear Squash Court"

Update July 6, 2012: In addition to the articles above, there are many, many more articles, exhibits and books discussing this moment in time. Click on the links below for more information.

Exhibits

University of Chicago: This is a link to the Special Collections Department at the University of Chicago, which built an exhibition to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the events of 1942.

The University of Chicago Archives:  a link to the picture of the squash court where the experiment was hosted

Articles

Library of Congress: This day in history

FermiLab: History and Archives Project of the Enrico Fermi Laboratory

Ames Laboratory: our history

Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Chapter 1, Wartime Laboratory

New York Times: The Day the Nuclear Age was Born

Los Angeles Times: Obituary

Wired: This Day in Tech

Northern Illinois University Library: The Birth of the Atomic Age

Books

The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses and Historians, by Richard Rhodes

Chicago: A Pictorial Celebration

The Manhattan Project: by Sue Vander Hook

The Manhattan Project: by Daniel Cohen

Note: In his book, "Squash: A History of the Game," James Zug states this court was actually a racquets court and not a squash court at all. Zug is a highly regarded historian and his statement should be noted. However, the archivists at the University of Chicago reference the activity taking place on a squash court.