THE GREAT ST. LOUIS ARENA

ART DECO GLORY TO UNFORTUNATE IMPLOSION

Dennis J. Polley

AN OPPORTUNITY

Up to the end of the 1904 World’s Fair, St. Louis had a tradition of hosting big indoor horse and agricultural shows.  The city had the huge St. Louis Exposition and Music Hall, but they demolished it.  In its place, the St. Lous Coliseum was built to host more individual events such as boxing matches.  It was closed in 1939, and neglected until 1953, the year in which it was also torn down.  The National Dairy show was a big event, and in 1928 it wanted to make St. Louis its permanent home for its annual two-week meeting of dairymen and their prize animals. A new building was needed.  It would be completely funded by private money raised by a group of businessmen under the title of The National Exposition Company.  They hired Gustel R. Kiewitt as architect.  For general contractor, Boaz-Kiel Construction Company was contracted.  Ground was broken and construction began on the Art-Deco style St. Louis Arena.

 

 

CONSTRUCTION

A large, open floor and seating area, with no supporting interior pillars, was required.  Kiewitt achieved this with a Lamella roof, first designed in Germany, supported by 20 cantilever steel trusses needing no interior pillar support.  The wood ribs were made of Douglas fir.  The roof was a very complex structure of great strength.  The Arena was completed in 1929, just slightly over one year after construction began.  Its dimensions were impressive: 476 feet long and 276 feet wide. Only Madison Square Garden in New York had a larger, unobstructed indoor entertainment space in the United States.  A 13-story building could have been erected inside the Arena.

ART DECO BRILLIANCE

The Art Deco architectural style rose to prominence in the 1920s and was popular throughout the 1940s.  It is considered the last, great architectural style.  Examples are New York’s Empire State and Chrysler Buildings.  Art Deco is characterized by strong, symmetrical lines and contrasting colors.  The twin towers flanking the Arena’s arched, front entrances are pure Art Deco.  Many people recall the Arena as the “Old Barn,” a hulking, compromised building with white paint slopped over its exterior.  As can be seen in the colorized photos, the exterior consisted of intricate, colorful glazed brick and tile patterns as did the interior.  This article’s initial two photos show two skylights circling the roof’s oval circumference.  The Arena’s original roofing material was also multi-colored.  The second photo in this paragraph clearly shows a patio area above the main arched entrances between the Art Deco towers.  It sported tables and chairs with umbrellas.  All these features would eventually be gone or covered by thick paint. 

THROUGH THE YEARS

The Arena hosted many events over the decades.  Speaking from personal experience, I recall going to the Fireman’s Rodeo, the Police Circus, the Outdoors Show featuring boats, campers and such and the Boy Scouts’ Jamboree.  This was in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  I also recall seeing the rock group Santana there in the 1970s.  The Arena hosted hockey, basketball and indoor soccer.  What follows is a list of the Arena’s tenants during the building’s lifetime:

St. Louis Flyers (AHA/AHL) (1929–1953)

St. Louis Eagles (NHL) (1934–1935)

Chicago Black Hawks (NHL) (occasional use; 1951–1959)

Toledo-St. Louis Mercurys (IHL) (1959–1960)

St. Louis Braves (CHL) (1963–1967)

St. Louis Blues (NHL) (1967–1994)

St. Louis Hawks (NBA) (occasional use; 1955–1968)

St. Louis Bombers (NBA) (1946–1950)

St. Louis Stars (NASL) (1971, 1974)

Spirits of St. Louis (ABA) (1974–1976)

St. Louis Steamers (MISL) (1979–1988)

St. Louis Storm (MISL) (1989–1992)

St. Louis Ambush (NPSL) (1992–1994)

St. Louis Vipers (RHI) (1993–1994)

Saint Louis Billikens men's basketball (NCAA) (1968–1973 and 1991–1994)

Saint Louis Billikens men's ice hockey (1970–1979)

 

HEAVY WEATHER

On February 10, 1959, around 2:10 a.m., tornado sirens were blaring.  An F2 tornado touched down in Sherman, MO.  The twister gained strength as it covered its 27.8-mile path on the ground.  By the time it roared onto Hampton and Oakland Ave. the monster had bulked up to an F4 strength packing winds between 207 and 260 miles per hour.  Within less than a minute it crumpled the KTVI TV transmission tower near the corner of Hampton and Oakland.  The Arena took a full hit.  Almost a fourth of its solid roof was literally extracted by the storm’s fury.  One of the Art Deco towers was knocked over.  When roof repairs were made, engineers from Germany had to be brought to St. Louis to execute the complicated job. (It was beyond the skill set of the drywall and dropped ceiling crowd.)  Later, you could always tell where the roof had been repaired because the wood was a lighter shade.   In a harbinger of future unenlightened Arena maintenance, rather than fixing the damaged Art Deco tower, the building's owners demolished its undamaged twin as well.

HOCKEY AND THE CHECKER DOME

The St. Louis Blues called the Arena home beginning in the 1967-68 season.  The building had been heavily neglected, causing Blues owner Sid Salomon Jr. to put several million dollars into the Arena after purchasing it from the Chicago Black Hawks farm team.  Salomon was constantly adding seats, and by the time the Blues left the Arena in 1994, it held seating for almost 20,000.  Many fans considered it the best venue for watching hockey.

In 1977, to keep the Blues in town, Ralston Purina, under the guidance of CEO R. Hal Dean purchased the team and the Arena, renaming the building The Checkerdome, after its Checkerboard Square company emblem.  The new name was not popular, but it did keep the team in St. Louis.  Ralston wanted to paint the roof in a checkerboard pattern, but that pattern was also used for aviation purposes, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) thankfully objected.

In 1983, Ralson Purina forfeited the team to the league. The team was then bought by Harry Ornest, a Los Angeles-based businessman, and The Checkerdome was renamed back to the Arena.  The building remained home to the Blues through 1994.

The last event at the Arena was a concert by Christian artist Carman Licciardello.  The lights then went out permanently.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

After the Blues left the Area, a complicated, financial and civic situation resulted in almost  certain demolition of the building.  What follows is a direct quote from Wikipedia:

“As a condition for the private financing of the demolition of city-owned Kiel Auditorium and the construction of privately owned Kiel Center (now the Enterprise Center) on the same Downtown site, local business group Civic Progress, Inc. insisted that the Cheltenham-neighborhood would not be allowed to compete with Kiel Center for any events, while the insurance burden for the building was left with the City of St. Louis. With no income allowed for the Arena while insurance expenses continued, the building sat vacant while pressure built on the city government to either make it revenue-producing (essentially impossible under the Civic Progress-imposed non-compete clause) or raze it. The Arena remained vacant for nearly five years before it was demolished in 1999.”

IMPLOSION

Examine the top photo to the left.  All the glazed tile and brick are no longer visible, covered by thick, white coats of paint.  The Art Deco towers are long gone. Only their foundation structures remain.  The patio area between the towers’ foundations hadn’t been used for decades.  The roof is no longer the multi-colored material originally used.  It was now sheathed in a green tarpaper, which also covered the skylights.  The interior had suffered the same, ill-conceived fate.  As a result of years of thoughtless so-called “maintenance,” the Arena was truly “The Old Barn,” an inexcusable outcome for another St. Louis landmark building.   On Feb. 27, 1999, after structural placement of 133 pound of TNT, the demolition button was pushed and 70 years of St. Louis memories imploded to the ground in 15 seconds, to be replaced with office and residential buildings called “The Highlands,” after the legendary, nearby amusement park that burnt down.

BOWLING

 The Arena also had a flanking building called the Arena Annex, which was a large one-story building with exhibit space for conventions.  Rock concerts were sometimes held there.  A matching building on the opposite side of the Arena housed the huge, multi-laned Arena Bowl.  I bowled there and recall it being gigantic with 72 lanes. It was the largest bowling alley in St. Louis.  It was impressive and hosted the TV show “Bowling for Dollars.”  The Arena Bowl was demolished in 1988.  I believe the other Annex building may have been demolished at the same time.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and Lost Treasures of St. Louis by Cameron Collins, Publisher: Reedy Press, 2017