Duquesne Gardens

Share of the Duquesne Traction Company, issued 23. November 1892

Duquesne Garden was originally built in 1890 as a trolley barn for the Duquesne Traction Company in the city's Oakland neighborhood. In 1895, Christopher Lyman Magee, a Pittsburgh politician, spent nearly $500,000 ($17.6 million in 2023) to purchase and renovate the building. He named the transformed structure Duquesne Garden, although it was always called the "Arena" by the locals.[3] The Garden, which had the world's largest indoor ice rink and a second-floor ballroom, became a premier indoor venue.[4]

Duquesne Garden on January 19, 1901. The Pittsburgh Athletic Club vs. Queen's University. Queen's won, 1-0, in front of 5,523 at the Garden. This postcard of the event was published in 1909

Speed skating, roller skating, dance contests, musical performances, roller derby, bicycle racing, and college basketball were all hosted at the Garden,[4] as were rodeos and the circus. The Garden also featured Pittsburgh Golden Gloves boxing and housed a movie theater.[3] The Duquesne Garden Ball Room, located on the second floor, has been used by some of the leading clubs and societies in the city for their annual dances.[5] The building quickly became the site for all manner of gatherings: There were opera performances, boxing matches and political rallies.[6]

However, the facility's main attraction was its artificial ice surface, unrivaled in North America. Most other American cities lacked a facility that produced artificial ice at the time. And with 26,000 square feet of ice surface at the Garden,[4] was nearly 50 feet longer than the modern-day rinks in the National Hockey League (NHL) and had state-of-the-art refrigeration and resurfacing technology.[3] On January 24, 1899, the Garden hosted its first ice hockey game in a match between the Pittsburgh Athletic Club and Western University of Pennsylvania (University of Pittsburgh). According to Total Hockey, the official encyclopedia of the NHL, Pittsburgh was one of the first cities in North America to lure amateur Canadian players for what was a standard $30 a week stipend and a local job in the early 1900s. The manager of a Canadian team returned from a trip to the Garden in 1902, according to an account in Total Hockey, and gave the following description to the Toronto Globe: "Pittsburgh is hockey crazy. Over 10,000 turned out for our three games there. The general admission being 35 cents and 75 cents for a box seat . . . the Pittsburgh rink is a dream . . . What a marvellous place it is."[7]

The teams of the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League, and the Pittsburgh Professionals of the International Professional Hockey League, played their games at the Garden up until 1909. The Garden's artificial ice surface helped make Pittsburgh a professional hockey pioneer, much the way the region had given birth to the first professional American football players in the 1890s. Players in the WPHL were paid to play hockey before 1904, but that is when the first professional league officially formed. The Pittsburgh Professionals joined Canadian Soo, Michigan Soo, Calumet Miners, and the Portage Lakes Hockey Club to form the IPHL in 1904. However, after the 1906–07 season, other professional leagues began popping up and the IPHL disbanded, while the WPHL was revived until 1909. During this era, Garnet Sixsmith, who played on several Pittsburgh teams, once scored 11 goals in a game at the Garden. His 11 goals is considered to be a record for the arena.[8]

From 1910 to 1915, hockey and ice skating at the Garden were replaced by roller skating, which was experiencing a wave of popularity.[9] Hockey was brought back in the winter of 1915–16, when the amateur Duquesne Garden hockey team (which later played under the banner of the Pittsburgh Athletic Association and further evolved into the Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets of the United States Amateur Hockey Association) was founded. The Carnegie Tech hockey club and the University of Pittsburgh hockey team also played their home games at the Garden. Crowds also attended skating sessions at Garden and took part in public skating events. In 1920, public skating was held every evening, except on days for performances, with Saturday morning being set aside for school children who wanted to learn how to skate.[5]

Exterior of the Garden c. 1909

On March 16, 1920, the United States men's national ice hockey team was founded at the Garden.[10] That same year at the Garden, Roy Schooley, the arena's manager, put together an 11-player squad that won silver at the Antwerp Games, in the sport's Olympic debut.[10][11] The Garden also hosted several contests, which were played on Mondays and Tuesdays, to help raise money in order to cover the expenses associated with sending the U.S. Olympic Hockey team to the games held in Antwerp, Belgium.[5]

By 1924, the Yellow Jackets of the USAHA's Western Division were so dominant that they spun off another Pittsburgh team, the Fort Pitt Hornets, who played in the Eastern Division. In 1925, both Pittsburgh clubs won their respective divisions and played each other for the 1924-1925 USAHA championship at the Garden. The Yellow Jackets won the title in a best of five series, 3 games to none with one tie.[12]

Duquesne Garden hockey team, 1916

In 1925, the expansion Pittsburgh Pirates team of the NHL was assembled by signing players from the Yellow Jackets to professional contracts. The Pirates were admitted to the NHL on November 7, 1925. Around this time, the Garden's massive ice surface was reduced to conform to the NHL's standards. Pittsburgh's first-ever NHL game was played on December 2, 1925, with the Pirates taking on the New York Americans in front of 8,200 fans. The Pirates lost the game in overtime, 2-1. By 1930, financial issues, associated with the Great Depression caused the Pirates to relocate to Philadelphia, before folding. What helped make the city such a hotbed for hockey in the early part of the century, the Duquesne Garden, ultimately helped doom the Pirates. The Garden held slightly more than 5,000 fans, which was fine at the turn of the century but small by comparison in the late 1920s to other arenas sprouting up, such as 18,000-seat Madison Square Garden. The Pirates did not make very much money playing in the 5,000-seat Garden. The team was so strapped for money that they traded Conacher to the New York Americans during the 1926-27 season for a journeyman player and $2,000. Conacher had been the highest-paid NHL player at $7,500 a year. The Pirates later moved the team across the state to become the Philadelphia Quakers for the franchise's last season in 1930-31.[11]

The Garden still witnessed ice hockey even during these dark financial times. In 1930, Roy Schooley founded a new Yellow Jackets team, which played for two years in the International Hockey League (IHL). Pittsburgh theatre chain owner John H. Harris secured a lease on the Garden in 1932[13] and by 1935 established a third Yellow Jackets incarnation which he entered in the Eastern Amateur Hockey League. In the 1935–36 season, the Yellow Jackets shared the Garden's ice time with the short-lived Pittsburgh Shamrocks of the IHL.[3]

Harris also scheduled boxing and rodeos at the Garden.[14] One notable rodeo act to come to the Gardens was Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger, who performed there on April 30, 1945.[15]

The Demolition of The Gardens in August 1956

Several other historic events took place at the Garden during Harris' tenure. First, on March 31, 1936 he hired Sonja Henie, a 24-year-old Norwegian figure skater, to perform before a Yellow Jackets' home game.[16] Harris found it difficult to draw a large crowd to hockey games during the Great Depression, so he hired Henie to entertain the audience between periods. The performances were a rousing success, and Harris soon set out to create an ice show to rival the song and dance spectaculars that were popular on Broadway.[14] He developed the Ice Capades, which premiered in September 1940. The skating corps of 150 young women clad in elaborate costumes captivated audiences. Harris's Ice Capades, founded in Pittsburgh with an $85,000 investment, was sold in 1963 for $5.5 million.[4] Harris also used the Gardens for Ice Capades auditions and as the show's training school, since many of the show's performers were from western Pennsylvania.[17]

Then on October 4, 1936, Harris purchased the Detroit Olympics and moved the team to Pittsburgh, where they were renamed the Pittsburgh Hornets, and became a member of the American Hockey League. Some players from the Yellow Jackets and Shamrocks players then joined the Hornets. The Yellow Jackets formally folded, while the Garden would be home for the Hornets for the next 20 seasons. The Hornets played their first game at the Garden on November 8, 1936, a 5-2 win over the Cleveland Barons. The franchise later won Calder Cups in 1951, versus the Providence Reds, and in 1955, versus the Buffalo Bisons. On January 10, 1956, the Gardens hosted the American Hockey League All Star Game for the city of Pittsburgh.[18]

However the Gardens was also the home for Duquesne University Basketball as well as the Pittsburgh Ironmen of the Basketball Association of America, a forerunner to the NBA. The team ended their only season in the BAA in 1946-47 with a record of 15-45. The Ironmen consisted of players like Press Maravich, a future college coach and father to Hall of Famer Pete Maravich, and Moe Becker.[19] The arena also hosted the first of 16 NBA neutral site regular season games played in Pittsburgh.

Another sport played at the arena was tennis. On January 15, 1937, the Garden hosted a championship tennis match between world champions Ellsworth Vines and Fred Perry.[20]