Civic Arena (Pittsburgh)

About

The Civic Arena, formerly the Civic Auditorium and later Mellon Arena, was a multi-purpose arena located in Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It primarily served as the home to the Pittsburgh Penguins, the city's National Hockey League (NHL) franchise, from 1967 to 2010. Constructed in 1961 for use by the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera (CLO), it was the brainchild of department store owner Edgar J. Kaufmann. It was the first retractable roof major-sports venue in the world, covering 170,000 square feet (16, 000 m2), constructed with nearly 3,000 tons of Pittsburgh steel and supported solely by a massive 260-foot-long (79 m) cantilevered arm on the exterior. Even though it was designed and engineered as a retractable-roof dome, the operating cost and repairs to the hydraulic jacks halted all full retractions after 1995, and the roof stayed permanently closed after 2001. The first roof opening was during a July 4, 1962, Carol Burnett show to which she exclaimed, "Ladies and gentlemen... I present the sky!" The Civic Arena hosted numerous concerts, the circus, political and religious rallies, roller derbies as well as contests in hockey, basketball, fish tournament weigh-ins, pro tennis, boxing, wrestling, lacrosse, football, ice skating championships, kennel shows, and soccer. The structure was used as the backdrop for several major Hollywood films, most prominently Sudden Death i

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.