Chicago Stadium

• 1. Chicago Stadium

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  "'I can feel our broadcast booth shaking! That's the kind of place Chicago Stadium is right now!'" Those words from CBS announcer Dan Kelly came during the 1971 Stanley Cup semifinals. The Blackhawks had just scored a series-clinching goal against the New York Rangers. For anyone who heard them, those words captured something essential about a building on Chicago's near west side. Chicago Stadium at 1800 West Madison Street opened on the 28th of March 1929, as the largest indoor arena in the world. Its maximum capacity reached 26,000, packed into three tiers above a floor that hosted boxing, hockey, basketball, political conventions, and concerts for 65 years. It earned the nickname the Madhouse on Madison. How that nickname came to life, and what it cost to build and lose the building, are worth examining in full.

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• 2. Paddy Harmon's Gamble

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  Paddy Harmon first proposed the stadium in 1926, shortly after Illinois legalized professional boxing. The success of the New York Rangers and New York Americans at Madison Square Garden gave him a model. Harmon also wanted to bring an NHL team to Chicago, but that franchise went to Colonel Frederic McLaughlin, whose team would become the Chicago Black Hawks. Undeterred, Harmon spent $2.5 million on construction and borrowed more, including $600,000 from James E. Norris. He chose to build in the Valley neighborhood on Chicago's west side, where he himself had grown up. Ground broke in July 1928, and the building opened eight months later.

  Harmon became the Stadium's first president, but enemies came with the territory. Disgruntled workmen set a fire on the roof; Harmon helped put it out himself. The Stadium board later forced him to resign over delays in finalizing the Black Hawks as tenants. He stayed on as an executive. Not long after, dynamite was placed at Norris's home on a night when Sidney Strotz, the Stadium's treasurer, was attending dinner there. The fuse failed to detonate. Harmon died less than a year after opening night in a car crash. He left his widow and daughter his Stadium shares and $2.50 in cash. His funeral was held in the building he had built, paid for by friends. In August 1930, the Stadium held a benefit boxing match for his family. The board also tried to turn the building into a dog racing track for the summer of 1930, backed by Thomas Duggan, but dog racing was ruled illegal in Chicago. Al Capone had operated tracks in Cook County for years before authorities shut them down as well. The Stadium entered receivership on the 20th of January 1933. In 1935, James Norris and Arthur Wirtz purchased the Stadium. The sale covered $150,000 in back taxes, $50,000 for reorganization, and $50,000 in new working capital. The building Harmon had paid for was the work of architect Eric Hall. Hall had designed every sight line around a single core belief about fairness.

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• 3. A Building Unlike Any Other

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  "The man who pays the lowest admission price has as much right to see the show as those who sit at the ringside." That was the guiding philosophy of Eric Hall, the architect who designed Chicago Stadium. Hall arranged every tier so that each seat faced the action directly. Art Deco flourishes ran along the exterior: flattened columns, long vertical windows, and relief sculptures of athletes above the entrances. Medallions of wrestlers decorated the walls. Detroit's Olympia stadium, completed two years before Chicago's, served as an architectural model. Chicago Stadium was also the first indoor arena to install air conditioning. The system was rudimentary by later standards. Late in the hockey and basketball seasons, it regularly filled the building with fog. There were no elevators. Workers carried kegs of beer to upper-floor concessions by forming a human chain. To bring them back, they rolled the kegs down the stairs, doing measurable damage in the process. The players' dressing rooms were built under the seats, connected to the ice by a corridor twenty-two steps long. Legend has it that a German Shepherd roamed the building at night as the Stadium's entire security team.

  In 1943, the Stadium installed a Bulova "Sports Timer" above center ice, a four-sided analog clock built for hockey. Each face carried a large 20-minute dial for game time, flanked by smaller 5-minute penalty faces. All the hands moved continuously during play. Each minute was marked only at every third second-increment on the main dial, making it genuinely difficult to read. That clock was replaced on the 21st of September 1975 by a digital scoreboard built by the Day Sign Company of Toronto. Boston Garden had installed a similar Day Sign clock for the 1969-70 NHL season. A further replacement came in 1985, built by White Way Sign and featuring a color electronic message board. White Way Sign also built the scoreboards for the United Center across the street. The Stadium was also one of only three NHL arenas with a shorter-than-regulation ice surface. The others were Boston Garden and the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. All three had been built before the NHL standardized ice dimensions; the missing distance came from the neutral zone. The building held one more element at a scale no indoor arena had attempted before it.

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• 4. The Organ and the Roar

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  The Barton organ at Chicago Stadium had 3,663 pipes and a volume estimated at 25 brass bands. Its console had six manuals and more than 800 stops, making it the world's largest theater organ console. Paddy Harmon had intended the instrument to provide music for every kind of event the building might host, from boxing matches to political conventions. Al Melgard played the organ during Blackhawks hockey games for decades. The instrument's contribution to the building's noise, combined with its close-quartered triple-tiered layout, carried over to basketball. For years the Stadium was known as the loudest arena in the NBA. Nancy Faust, already known as the organist for Chicago White Sox games, played at courtside for Bulls home games from 1976 to 1984. From 1985 to 1989, she played the Barton organ for Blackhawks hockey as well. Frank Pellico took over the keyboard in 1990 and continued as the Blackhawks' organist until 2025.

  During the 1973 Stanley Cup Final against Montreal, Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz had the horn from his private yacht installed in the building. The horn, a Kahlenberg Q-3, was sounded after every Blackhawks goal. That practice spread across professional hockey in the following years, becoming the standard goal horn tradition. Fans at Blackhawks games also developed a habit of cheering loudly through the national anthem, particularly when sung by Wayne Messmer. Those in the second balcony would sometimes add sparklers and flags. Many who attended regularly consider the anthem before the 1991 NHL All-Star Game to have been the most memorable of all. That game was played during the Gulf War. The tradition carried over to the United Center when the teams relocated.

  Harvey Wittenberg served as the Stadium's longtime public address announcer with a delivery that became part of the texture of a Blackhawks game. His goal calls were flat and precise: "Blackhawk goal scored by #9, Bobby Hull, unassisted, at 6:13." In the mid-1980s, a separate tradition took hold for Bulls games. Tommy Edwards introduced the starting lineup with spotlights moving through a darkened arena, the music "Sirius" by The Alan Parsons Project running underneath. His successor Ray Clay carried the tradition forward. Under head coach Phil Jackson, with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen on the floor, the introduction became synonymous with one of professional basketball's greatest dynasties. During this period, the Bulls stopped using the live organ in favor of recorded music.

  In 1992, both the Blackhawks and the Bulls reached the finals of their respective leagues simultaneously, for the first time in the Stadium's history.

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• 5. Championships and Classics

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  In December 1932, a snowstorm and freezing temperatures drove the NFL championship game indoors, to Chicago Stadium. The Chicago Bears faced the Portsmouth Spartans, who would later relocate and become the Detroit Lions. The Bears won 9-0 in the first NFL championship game ever played inside an enclosed building.

  The Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup on home ice twice in the Stadium's first decade. In 1934, they defeated the Detroit Red Wings 1-0 in the second overtime of game four. In 1938, they beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-1 in game four. That was the last Stanley Cup won at Chicago Stadium. Bobby Hull scored twice in game one of the 1961 Stanley Cup Final, a 3-2 Blackhawks win. The Blackhawks went on to claim the series at Detroit's Olympia, four games to two.

  the 16th of July 1947 brought one of the most celebrated boxing matches of the twentieth century to Chicago Stadium. Rocky Graziano stopped Tony Zale in the sixth round before 18,547 fans, a bout widely cited as one of the finest of that era. On Valentine's Day 1951, Sugar Ray Robinson defeated Jake LaMotta in the thirteenth round, their sixth and final meeting. Rocky Marciano knocked out Jersey Joe Walcott in the first round on the 15th of May 1953.

  Michael Jordan scored 61 points at Chicago Stadium on the 16th of April 1987. That made him the only NBA player other than Wilt Chamberlain to top 3,000 points in a single season. The Bulls won their first championship in 1991. In 1992, the Bulls took their second straight title in game six of the NBA Finals on the Stadium floor, beating the Portland Trail Blazers. The Blackhawks, playing in the same building that spring, were swept four games to none by the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Penguins won game four 6-5 to claim their second consecutive Stanley Cup. The Bulls added their third straight championship in 1993. The building's parallel life as a political stage ran alongside its sports history. Some of the most consequential decisions in American presidential politics were made inside the same walls.

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• 6. A Political Stage

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  Franklin D. Roosevelt won three Democratic presidential nominations at Chicago Stadium, in 1932, 1940, and 1944. His opponents' party also used the same building for two of its nominating conventions. Herbert Hoover won the Republican nomination at the Stadium in 1932, then lost to Roosevelt. Thomas Dewey was nominated there in 1944, and also lost to Roosevelt. In two separate elections, the nominees of both major parties were chosen under the same roof.

  Anton J. Cermak, the mayor of Chicago, was the sole fatality of an assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin Roosevelt. His funeral was held at Chicago Stadium in 1933. In 1936, both presidential campaigns staged rallies there. Roosevelt's rally drew over a million people seeking entry; more than 200,000 came inside, overwhelming the building's capacity of 25,000.

  In 1961, scenes for the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate were filmed at the Stadium, depicting a Republican nominating convention. The scenes in the finished film are set at Madison Square Garden in New York, but the building used was the one on Madison Street. The building's calendar extended well beyond politics and professional sports, drawing performers and audiences from across American culture.

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• 7. More Than an Arena

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  In 1946, while waiting backstage to enter the arena floor during a rodeo, Roy Rogers proposed to Dale Evans. The Stadium hosted rodeo competitions alongside hockey and basketball. It also housed Disney on Parade when that touring production launched on the 25th of December 1969. In 1968, the Ice Capades came to the Stadium featuring Peggy Fleming. She had won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics earlier that year.

  Elvis Presley played three shows at Chicago Stadium in June 1972. He returned for his last Chicago concerts on the 1st and the 2nd of May 1977. Bob Dylan performed there with the Band on January 3rd and 4th, 1974. The Rolling Stones played three nights in July 1975. Paul McCartney's Wings Over America tour ran through the Stadium from May 31st through the 2nd of June 1976, his first Chicago concerts in a decade. Frank Sinatra rang in the new year there on the 31st of December 1975, performing 23 songs. Michael Jackson and his brothers played the Stadium on the Destiny Tour in November 1979 and on the Triumph Tour in August 1981.

  Led Zeppelin played four shows at the Stadium in the spring of 1977, part of their final North American tour. Two more scheduled shows were cancelled when the death of Robert Plant's son cut the tour short. The band was booked to return for four concerts in November 1980. That tour was officially cancelled on the 27th of September 1980, two days after the death of drummer John Bonham. The final concert at Chicago Stadium was held on the 10th of March 1994, with Pearl Jam, Urge Overkill, and The Frogs on the bill. Six months after the final concert, the Stadium hosted its last event. The question of what would happen to the building had already been answered.

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• 8. The End of the Roar

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  On the 9th of September 1994, Scottie Pippen organized a charity basketball game at the Stadium, the Ameritech Classic. It was run through Reverend Jesse Jackson's Push-Excel program. Michael Jordan was in retirement at the time and agreed to play. He scored 52 points, leading the White team to a 187-150 victory over Pippen's Red team. At the end of the game, Jordan knelt at center court and kissed the Bulls logo on the floor. It was the last event ever held at Chicago Stadium.

  CNN televised the demolition in 1995. Devoted fans of the Blackhawks and Bulls wept as the wrecking ball struck the walls. The United Center rose directly across the street to take its place. The site where Chicago Stadium stood is now a parking lot for the new arena.

  The Barton organ was removed when the building closed in 1994. It went first to a museum, and when that museum closed, to a warehouse in Phoenix, Arizona. In October 1996, a propane tank explosion at that warehouse destroyed the organ and a second theater organ stored alongside it. Only the console survived. It came to rest at the Las Vegas residence of Phil Maloof, where it remains playable, now fitted with new pipes. The center section of the Chicago Bulls' floor made its way to Michael Jordan's trophy room at his North Carolina home. Two friezes from the original structure were incorporated into a building at St. Ignatius College Prep School at 1076 West Roosevelt Road. Two parking lots that once served the Stadium are still in use for United Center events. They previously retained signs reading "People's Stadium Parking." A pavement plaque on the north side of the United Center reads: "Chicago Stadium - 1929-1994 - Remember The Roar."

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