Postcard History

Sports arenas are often the best-known public buildings in America. They are centers of our culture where communities gather to celebrate athletic excellence and entertainment. From Boston to Los Angeles, these venues showcase some of the world’s most innovative architecture. They serve as hubs for sporting events, concerts, and other large gatherings that reflect the evolving need for entertainment in our country. Exploring the history and cultural significance of American sports arenas can reveal a seminal part of our national identity.

New York, Madison Square Garden
There have been three such structures with this name, the first two Madison Square Gardens were located in Madison Square at Madison Avenue and 25th Street. The first Madison Square Garden was built in 1879 but was demolished in 1890 due to structural deficiencies.

The second Garden (left) was designed by noted architect Stanford White and operated from 1890 until 1925. Its tower was modeled after the Giralda, the 32-story bell tower of the Cathedral of Santa Justa in Sevilla, Spain. It seated 8,000 in its main hall and was the largest arena in the world.

There was also a 1,200-seat theater, a concert hall with a capacity of 1,500, New York City’s largest restaurant, and a roof garden. It was torn down to make way for a new headquarters for New York Life Insurance.

During the 1920s, America’s Golden Age of Sports, a number of stadiums and sports arenas were erected across the country. The third Madison Square Garden was located on 8th Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets and opened on December 15, 1925. For four decades, the Garden was the center of American sports.

Built by boxing promoter, Tex Rickard, the Garden seated 18,496 for boxing, although some bouts had attendance over 20,000. Besides hosting circuses, rodeos, boxing, wrestling, ice shows, and the Westminster Dog Show, the Garden was the home of the New York Rangers of the NHL from 1926 until 1968 and the New York Knicks of the NBA from 1946 until 1968.

A second NHL team, the New York/Brooklyn Americans called the Garden home from 1926 until 1941. The third Garden hosted the collegiate National Invitational Tournament from 1938 until 1967 and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament from 1943 until 1950. It closed on February 13, 1968, when the present Madison Square Garden opened on the site of the former Pennsylvania Station. Demolition of the third Garden began in the summer of 1968 and finished in early 1969.

The Boston Garden was also designed by boxing promoter, Tex Rickard. It opened on November 17, 1928, and was designed primarily as a boxing arena, giving spectators a closeup view of the floor. Rickard, the builder of Madison Square Garden, wanted to build several arenas around the country but died in 1929 before he could bring his plan to fruition. The Art Deco style building was located atop the Boston and Maine Railroad’s North Station, and the B&M owned the Garden until 1965.

The Boston Garden was home to the National Hockey League Boston Bruins from 1928 until 1995. It was home to the Boston Celtics of the NBA from 1946 until 1995. In the Garden’s final years, it seated 14,890 for basketball and 14,448 for hockey. There were a number of quirks to the Boston Garden. The hockey ice rink was nine feet shorter and two feet narrower than the current standard NHL rink. At the time the Garden was built, the NHL did not mandate a standard size for its playing surface, and the smaller Boston Garden rink was grandfathered since it could not be expanded due to the size of the arena floor. The Garden had a unique parquet basketball floor that was installed in 1952. Celtics players knew how the basketball would bounce on certain sections of the floor and took advantage of it, frustrating visiting teams who claimed the floor gave the Celtics an unfair advantage.

By the 1970s, the Boston Garden was deteriorating. In some sections, the fan’s view of the floor was blocked by pillars and seating was cramped and uncomfortable. The Boston Garden lacked air-conditioning which presented problems as the NBA and NHL seasons, formerly “winter” sports extended into June. It took over two decades for the owners of the Bruins and Celtics and Massachusetts politicians to develop a plan to replace it. The Garden hosted its last sporting event in September 1995 and was demolished in 1998. It was replaced by the TD Garden that opened in 1995 and was built next door to the old Garden.

The Chicago Stadium opened in March 1929 after eight months of construction. It was constructed and financed by Paddy Harmon, a boxing and sports promoter, who owned 42.5 % of the stock. Harmon died in a car accident in 1930, and the Stadium went into receivership in 1933 due to the Depression. Ownership passed to the Norris and Wirtz families in 1935 who controlled it until its closure in 1994.

The Chicago Stadium was a blend of neoclassical and art deco architecture. The exterior limestone reliefs reflected classical Olympic Greek and Roman heroes with modern touches including a pair of ice skates, a pair of boxing gloves, and a bicycle, blending the Olympics with the sports that were popular in the 1920s. Constructed with steel trusses that spanned 266 feet without support columns, it offered sporting fans unobstructed views, rare for that era. It seated 17,317 for ice hockey and 18,676 for basketball. The Chicago Stadium had a Barton organ with 3,663 pipes, six keyboards, and 800 stops. Its reverberating sounds made the Stadium one of the noisiest sports arenas ever.

The Chicago Stadium was home to the NHL Chicago Black Hawks from 1929 through 1994 and the Chicago Bulls from 1967 through 1994. Due to a snowstorm and sub-zero wind chill, the Chicago Bears played the 1932 NFL Championship Game inside Chicago Stadium against the Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans. The field was only 80 yards long and the Bears won 9–0 before 11,198 fans.

The Stadium closed in 1994 and was demolished in 1995.

When it opened in September 1929, the St. Louis Arena was the second largest sports and/or entertainment venue in the United States after Madison Square Garden. Designed as a multi-purpose arena, it had a dirt floor for the first fifteen years of its existence and was nicknamed the barn. The impetus for its construction was for St. Louis to become the permanent home for the National Dairy Show, an annual two-week meeting of dairymen. Sports fans claimed the odor of manure lingered in the building long after the Dairy Show left town.

Designed by Gustel Kiewitt, the “lamella dome” was supported by twenty steel cantilever trusses that spanned 278 feet eliminating supporting pillars prevalent in other arenas of the era. A 13-story building could easily fit inside the mammoth dome.

The Arena was the home of the NHL St. Louis Blues from 1967 through 1994. The dome’s design made the crowd sound so loud and boisterous that opposing teams dreaded playing there. The owner of the Blues, Sid Salomon, Jr., purchased the Arena and spent several million dollars to renovate the poorly maintained structure. For much of its existence, the Arena seated 14,200 for hockey and Salomon increased seating to 18,000. Salomon sold the Arena and the Blues to the Ralston Purina Company in 1977. Ralston Purina renamed the arena, the Checkerdome, after the company’s checkerboard logo. The new owner of the Blues in 1983 reverted the Checkerdome to its original name.

In 1994, the Blues moved to the newly build Kiel Center (now the Enterprise Center) and the Arena was without its major tenant. It remained empty for five years before it was imploded in 1999. The massive structure was obliterated in thirty seconds.

The New Orleans Municipal Auditorium opened in May 1930. A state-of-the-art facility for the era, it was designed to host sporting events, plays, concerts, and balls. It played host to the annual Mardi Gras Krewe balls.

The impressive five-story, Italian Renaissance-style limestone structure featured three prominent stone porch entrances, large arched window and door openings, and some dentil and band detailing. Heavy bronze doors punctuated entrances, and inside, marble floors, wood-paneled walls and plaster ceilings greeted visitors. The 75,000-square-foot auditorium could accommodate up to 10,000 seats. A 35,000-square-foot exhibition space was added in 1931, allowing the building to also function as a convention center.

For one year, 1974 – 1975, it was the home court of the NBA New Orleans Jazz before their move to the Superdome. From 1994 until 1996, it served as the temporary home of Harrah’s Casino, closing it to other uses. In the late 1990s the building underwent a $39 million restoration. The Municipal Auditorium suffered five feet of flooding during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 inundating the basement, destroying the building’s electrical and mechanical systems. It would cost over $80 million to repair the damage and reopen the once elegant structure. Twenty years after Katrina, the Auditorium sits abandoned.

Ninety years after it opened, the Kansas City Municipal Auditorium is still going strong as it marches towards it 100^th birthday. The Kansas City Municipal Auditorium opened on December 1, 1935. Built in the Art Deco, Streamline Moderne style, the Municipal Auditorium was one of the most impressive buildings built during the 1930s. In 2000, the Princeton Architectural Press named it one of the five hundred most important architectural works in the United States. Within the massive building were a sports arena seating 14,000 (current seating is 7,300 permanent seats and 2,687 temporary seats), a music hall seating 2,700 (2,363 today), a little theater seating 600 that now serves as a banquet hall, and underneath the arena is a 46,000 square foot exhibit hall for events like auto shows. Rare for the era, the building was completely airconditioned.

For over thirty years, the arena was one of the top basketball facilities in the country. It hosted three of the first four NCAA Final Four tournaments and nine overall. The arena was the home of the NBA Kansas City – Omaha Kings from 1972 through 1974. The Kings moved to the 16,785 seat Kemper Arena but had to play most of the 1979 – 1980 season at the Municipal Auditorium when the Kemper Arena’s roof collapsed during a June 1979 rainstorm. It has been the home court of the University of Missouri – Kansas City Roos from 1986 through 2010 and 2012 through the present. The NAIA Men’s Division I Basketball National Tournament was played in the arena from 1937 through 1974. In 2002, the NAIA Tournament moved back to the Municipal Auditorium.