The Chicago Coliseum was the name of a succession of three large indoor arenas in Chicago, Illinois from the 1860s to 1982 that each served as a sports venue, convention center, and exhibition hall over the course of their respective histories. The first Coliseum briefly made an appearance in the late 1860s at State and Washington streets in Chicago’s downtown. The second, at 63rd Street near Stony Island Avenue in the south side's Woodlawn community, hosted the 1896 Democratic National Convention, and the third, located at 15th and Wabash on the near south side, hosted the 1904–20 Republican National Conventions and the 1912 Progressive Party convention.
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The first Coliseum hosted horse shows, boxing matches, and circus acts beginning in 1866,[1] and was a somewhat rough place that hosted prizefights and animal acts.
The second Coliseum in Woodlawn had a difficult history. Initial construction began early in 1895 on a 14-acre (57,000 m2) site of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show at the World's Columbian Exposition, but in August of that year the incomplete structure collapsed, and builders had to start over. The construction of the 300-by-700 foot building entailed the use of 2.5 million pounds of steel, 3.2 million feet of lumber, and 3 million bricks, and was finally completed in June 1896. The building was impressive in size for its day, twice as large as Madison Square Garden; its interior being supported by 14 massive arches, 70 feet high with a span of 230 feet. There were seven acres of interior floor space. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show opened the facility, and in July it hosted the Democratic national convention, which nominated for the presidency William Jennings Bryan, who electrified the crowd with his famous “Cross of Gold” speech.
College football teams immediately saw the feasibility of playing indoor games in the Coliseum, and four big games took place:
The Carlisle games represented the first time the Carlisle Indian School played in the Midwest. In 1896, 8,000 fans each attended the Chicago-Michigan and Carlisle-Wisconsin games, and in 1897, 12,000 fans attended the Carlisle-Illinois game and 10,000 the Michigan-Illinois game.
The Coliseum by this time was being hailed as a financial success. Besides football games, the facility hosted bicycle races, the Military and Athletic Carnival of the AAU, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, horse shows, agricultural exhibitions, and commercial trade shows. But all this would soon come to an end. On December 24, around 6:00 PM, during a manufacturer’s carnival and winter fair, while many visitors had left the exhibit for supper, a fire broke out and swept through the building. While hundreds were in the building at the time, they all escaped, and there were no deaths, except for one fireman. The building was completely destroyed, primarily when one of the 14 arches supporting the roof fell over to bring down all the other arches like a row of dominoes. The fire consumed the building within twenty minutes. This massive structure, one of the greatest indoor facilities of the nineteenth century, had a lifespan of only 19 months.
The third Coliseum was built on Wabash Avenue, between 14th and 16th Streets, by candy manufacturer Charles F. Gunther, in 1899. It took the place of the transplanted Libby Prison, a warehouse turned Civil War prison that Gunther had shipped, brick by brick, from its original site in Richmond, Virginia, in 1889, and operated as a Civil War museum.
Gunther preserved part of Libby's facade, leading to the misconception that the Coliseum itself had once housed Union prisoners of war. In fact, the only penitents to "serve time" within the Coliseum's walls were hockey players sentenced to the penalty box.
The Coliseum hosted the Chicago Blackhawks of the NHL from 1926–1929 with a seating capacity of 6,000. It was also the home of the Chicago Cardinals (later renamed Chicago Americans) of the American Hockey Association 1926–27 and the Chicago Shamrocks of the American Hockey Association 1931–32. In June 1928, fight promoter Paddy Harmon announced plans to construct Chicago Stadium, with the Black Hawks as the marquee tenants.
As the 1928–29 NHL season approached, the Stadium was not yet ready, and Blackhawks owner Major Frederic McLaughlin had had a falling out with Harmon. Consequently, the Blackhawks arranged to continue playing at the Coliseum. However, they could only get ice time through January 1929; they played the remainder of their "home" games in Detroit and in Fort Erie, Ontario, across the Niagara River from Buffalo.
The Hawks were back at the Coliseum as the 1929–30 season opened, but negotiations with the Stadium resumed in the fall of 1929 after Harmon was deposed as head of the Chicago Stadium Corporation. In December 1929, they began play at the Stadium.
In 1932, another dispute led the Hawks to return temporarily to the Coliseum, for their first three home games of the 1932–33 campaign. On November 21, the Black Hawks defeated the Montreal Canadiens, 2–1, in their final game on Coliseum ice. Canadiens superstar Howie Morenz was the last player to score an NHL goal at the Coliseum, assisted by Aurel Joliat and Johnny Gagnon, at 7:06 of the second period.
With the Black Hawks gone, and the Depression on, use of the arena was limited. In 1935, promoter Leo Seltzer, drawing on the Depression-era popularity of roller skating, conceived the idea of a Roller Derby. In 1935, he staged the world's first Roller Derby at the arena. The event drew more than 20,000 people.
The arena was re-furbished for use by the Chicago Packers, an expansion NBA team. Among the improvements was an increase of the seating capacity to 7000. After playing their first season in the International Amphitheater, the Packers changed their name to the Zephyrs and moved into the Coliseum in 1962.[2] In 1963 they moved to Baltimore and once again renamed the team, as the Bullets. Today they are known as the Washington Wizards. The NBA would return to Chicago with the Bulls expansion team in 1966, but the Bulls opted to use the International Amphitheatre and then Chicago Stadium as their home courts, so the Coliseum remained without a major tenant.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Coliseum was a popular venue for professional wrestling matches, many of which were televised. Wrestlers like Gorgeous George and Angelo Poffo wrestled a number of matches there.
The arena stood for a number of years after the Packers left, serving rock concerts, and protests during the 1968 Democratic Convention. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the radical antiwar organization, held their last national convention at the Coliseum in June 1969.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, The Coliseum saw duty as "The Syndrome", a general-admission venue for rock music concerts. Many of the popular bands of the era played there, including The Grateful Dead, Cream, Grand Funk Railroad, Steppenwolf, Jethro Tull, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, and many others. The venue was also hosting roller derbys and pro wrestling matches.
In 1971, the city shut the building down for fire violations, and the building fell into disuse, finally being demolished in 1982. Part of the Libby facade was given to the Chicago History Museum. The site is now occupied by the Soka Gakkai USA Culture Center. Coliseum Park, across the street at 14th Place and Wabash Ave., commemorates this historic structure.
| Events and tenants | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Wigwam |
Host of the Democratic National Convention 1896 |
Succeeded by Convention Hall |
| Preceded by Convention Hall |
Host of the Republican National Convention 1904–1920 |
Succeeded by Public Auditorium |
| Preceded by first arena |
Home of the Chicago Black Hawks 1926–1929 |
Succeeded by Chicago Stadium |
| Preceded by International Amphitheatre |
Home of the Chicago Zephyrs 1962–1963 |
Succeeded by Baltimore Civic Center |
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