Remembering the old barn

joe galiba

Registered User
Apr 16, 2020
1,819
2,017
When Kiel Center was built, the stipulation on it was that The Arena couldn't be used for any event that could be held at Kiel Center. That's ... well, everything. From there, the city has no reason to maintain it [there might have even been a clause in the agreement at the request of Civic Progress to not do maintenance] and it quickly fell into disrepair.

From what I gather, even in the final years the maintenance costs were high and going up every year. I forget which sports reporter it was who was really against leaving it and having it eventually torn down, and he was taken in less than a year later; that's what convinced him it had to go and that there was no way to rehab it, and he was surprised they were able to make it last as long as they did.

TL;DR: Civic Progress said it had to go.

i hate Civic Progress with the heat of a blue star
chuck knight and his cronies drove the football Cardinals out of Stl with their arrogance and condescension dripping from them as laughed Bidwell out of town
ugghhh
but they were right about Kiel (other than the original seat color) and the Arena needing to go, as much as I miss it
 

Renard

Registered User
Nov 14, 2011
2,148
761
St. Louis, MO
Much of the Roman Colosseum is still standing- built in about 80 AD. None of the Arena remains, opened in 1929.

My girlfriend waited in line and got me a stone block from the bldg after demolition. I use it as a doorstop.

A big chunk of the Arena roof was torn off by a toronado in 1959. They fixed it, of course, but the new part was plainly visible from the seats.

With a lot of cigarettes being smoked during games, there would be a significant cloud of smoke hanging in the building by the third period.
 
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Hrkac Circus

Registered User
Dec 11, 2014
755
944
Vienna, IL
I saw several games there. I remember seeing a Gino Cavalini hat trick. I also saw the U2 Joshua Tree concert. I always enjoyed the atmosphere and felt at home there.
 

Ted Hoffman

The other Rick Zombo
Dec 15, 2002
28,856
8,110
i hate Civic Progress with the heat of a blue star
chuck knight and his cronies drove the football Cardinals out of Stl with their arrogance and condescension dripping from them as laughed Bidwell out of town
ugghhh
but they were right about Kiel (other than the original seat color) and the Arena needing to go, as much as I miss it
If I'm going to hate Civic Progress, it's not over the football Cardinals. Bill Bidwell made his own bed through his own incompetence running the team; I get the city and leaders not wanting to hand him a brand new stadium without him making some changes, which he was hell-bent on never doing. Heck, look at attendance in Phoenix after he got there; it went from ideal location for an expansion team if we were doing that to half the fans in the stands are there for the visiting team within 5 years. People there quickly learned what we knew here: Bill Bidwell was a blithering idiot who could f*** up a 1-item garage sale, and giving him the riches of a new stadium without forcing him to do something different was insanity.

No, if you're going to hate Civic Progress do it for how they allegedly disposed of Michael Shanahan. To this day, it's the most favorite dismissal story I've ever heard and really sums up Civic Progress in a nutshell.
 

joe galiba

Registered User
Apr 16, 2020
1,819
2,017
If I'm going to hate Civic Progress, it's not over the football Cardinals. Bill Bidwell made his own bed through his own incompetence running the team; I get the city and leaders not wanting to hand him a brand new stadium without him making some changes, which he was hell-bent on never doing. Heck, look at attendance in Phoenix after he got there; it went from ideal location for an expansion team if we were doing that to half the fans in the stands are there for the visiting team within 5 years. People there quickly learned what we knew here: Bill Bidwell was a blithering idiot who could f*** up a 1-item garage sale, and giving him the riches of a new stadium without forcing him to do something different was insanity.

No, if you're going to hate Civic Progress do it for how they allegedly disposed of Michael Shanahan. To this day, it's the most favorite dismissal story I've ever heard and really sums up Civic Progress in a nutshell.

yes and no
yes Bidwell was incompetent as a football guy
but, he was getting completely shafted on income as second fiddle tenant by the Cards and the city
TV revenues hadn’t taken off yet, and his only income was from football, as he didn’t own any other business, leaving him in a financial untenable position
he had a stadium agreement with the county as a done deal, until Civic Progress shafted it - we were going to have an open air football stadium in the county and they went behind the scenes to kill it - as they wouldn’t be the kingmakers making the money and picking which of their cronies would be making the money too
they looked down on Bidwell as a incompetent rube and figured he wouldn’t really move the team, but his move was ultimately financially successful

you are 100% right on about Shanahan, they looked down on him too, as he wasn’t a stiff upper lip, old money kind of guy
 

Ted Hoffman

The other Rick Zombo
Dec 15, 2002
28,856
8,110
yes and no
yes Bidwell was incompetent as a football guy
but, he was getting completely shafted on income as second fiddle tenant by the Cards and the city
Both teams were getting shafted until 1981, when A-B took control of the entity that owned the stadium. OK, he had a beef about not getting a share of revenues the Cardinals were now getting. No one was in any real hurry to do him favors when his teams were going 5-11, 6-10 and he kept employed the same drafting goober that gave us 1st round picks like Steve Pisarkewicz (QB), Steve Little (P), Clyde Duncan (WR), Anthony Bell (LB) and Kelly Stouffer (QB) - all (and others) of which weren't projected anywhere near the 1st round and who went down as spectacular draft busts. His motivation wasn't make the team better, attract fans, earn something better. It was do as little as possible, have stuff handed to me, keep my cronies employed, don't give a shit if the team sucks ass, expect fans to show up anyway. It didn't help when he'd ask for something, the city and county agreed to whatever he was asking, and then he'd up his asking price and demand it get met or he was moving the team. Eventually that became "give me a domed stadium and all the revenues that go with it." When he refused to do anything to improve the franchise's outlook - like, say, fire his shitty draft guy / GM - the mayor and county executive refused to budge any farther because they weren't going to support a loser who didn't care about his team.

Let's also not forget his time-honored tradition of letting coaches know they were fired at the end of the season: those guys going off the field to go to their coaches rooms, only to find the locks had been replaced and all their belongings were locked inside. People in the St. Louis area were sad to see the team leave; no one was sad to see him go.
 

joe galiba

Registered User
Apr 16, 2020
1,819
2,017
the county executive was who he had the agreement with to build the stadium
he was most certainly on the low end of the owners spectrum and the bad drafting speaks for itself, but they they some pretty good teams in the 60’s, the great teams in the 70’s also
the team wasn’t great when he moved but it was solid
he just couldn’t keep his nose out of the football end of things
part of the reason he was so cheap was he truly didn’t have much money and part is he was of a certain age that lived thru the great depression

the same group of Civic leadership also shafted us out of an expansion team as they undercut Jerry Clinton at the last minute
 

Sgt Schultz

Registered User
Jun 30, 2019
378
491
Santa Fe, NM
I grew up in the late 60s and 70s. My dad and I used to go to the Arena to see SLU hockey games. The Billikens were pretty good in those days, and I remember seeing several games against Lake Superior State over the years. That became a casualty of the Purina acquisition of the Blues and the Arena.

Going to a Blues game in those days was a big deal. Our neighbor had season tickets, and he would offer them to us if he couldn't make a game. I don't remember when I saw my first Blues game. I do remember a few Saturday afternoon games in the old place.

After I graduated from college and started working, I had football season tickets and would go to several Blues and Cardinals baseball games every year. The one time I remember most was a playoff game against Toronto, so it had to be in '86 or '87. For whatever reason, I offered to take a neighbor kid, a boy about 7 or 8. Nice kid, his dad worked odd hours, I was friendly with his parents and him, so I talked to his mom and she said okay.

Since it was his first game, I got seats in the first or second row, near the glass next to one of the corners. Not the best seats to see the entire ice (which is why they were available, I guess), but great if you want to experience the game. It was his first hockey game. He was excited but kind of quiet. Then there was a check into the boards where we got to see Rick Vaive's face up close (like pressed against the glass), and the kid was hooked. I suspect he is a Blues fan to this day.

And no, I didn't buy him a beer.

I remember my parents and I going to the arena for circuses and other non-sporting events.

I moved out of the area in '88, so I've not been to the new place. It looks great on TV, but the old barn was special. The league was full of those old places back then (Chicago Stadium, Boston Garden, the Forum in Montreal, Maple Leaf Garden) and while I never made it to any of the others, they all had character. They may have sounded like they were going to fall down at times, but that was part of the charm.

As for Bill Bidwill, he was a strange guy. It takes a different kind of person to fire a head coach by having the locks changed to the coach's office in the second half of the last home game of the season. But he had a point: the football Cardinals were always going to be a distant second to the baseball Cardinals. In a lot of ways, they were the proverbial "ugly stepchild."

Busch Stadium was not a good football venue, although I had some great times at games there. I was in attendance or Dan Dierdorf's last game. There were about 20,000 of us, including most of the regulars in the section where my seat was, it was cold, snowy, and we all had a blast.
 

Robert Smith II

Registered User
Feb 23, 2021
1
4
I went there for a handful of Blues and Storm soccer games with my dad when I was pretty young. Easily some of my favorite memories with him.

The thing I remember most was being amazed at how rowdy the fans were. I'd never seen anything like it and loved every second. One time after a game a wasted guy sprinted by me and straight into a bush, hilarious. I hate how proper everyone is at Blues games these days. I get that it's more family friendly and all but the chaos and fights with Blackhawks fans were amazing. I'm guessing the tickets and beer were cheap enough that you could go there and get drunk without spending a fortune. The location obviously had something to do with it. I live on Hampton now and wish they still played in good ole South City.

Had to love the crappy yellow seats that were falling apart and the white fabric in the rafters that had years of water damage stains. One game I had to get down on my knees to see the scoreboard because of the overhang. The organ mixed with the raucous crowd noise and the feeling that the building might come crashing down after a big goal, anyone with a pulse had to love that.
 

Jim ODonnell

Registered User
Dec 20, 2018
26
33
The steep vertical rise was great for noise and atmosphere. If you sat high in the upper circle, you could see the smoke clouding in the rafters. Smoking was allowed in the concourse, it was not allowed in the seats but it was tolerated in the upper circle.

The stairwells connecting the levels were an adventure and an attraction of their own. Of course they were packed like cattle chutes, and the voices echoed throughout. I recall the building had some escalators, but they certainly didn't access the "upper" upper circle, the blue sections.

When Chicago was in town they always had some away fans, and there were often fights in the stairwells and bathrooms. The 'Hawks teams of those years usually beat the Blues, the games had plenty of fights on the ice so it didn't take much to kick off fights in the crowd as well. Cops would push their way through the crowds, jump right into the fights and just wail away with their billy clubs until the fight stopped . . . that was really no big deal at that time and in that context, they'd just pummel everyone into submission.

If you have video of the Monday Night Miracle, there's a moment when the camera cuts to cops swinging their billy clubs to break up a fight in the seats. I think it's late in the 2nd or early in the 3rd, and it's real quick just two or three seconds. . . Dan Kelly doesn't even remark on it, it's just there for a bit then play resumes.
 
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Jim ODonnell

Registered User
Dec 20, 2018
26
33
Had to love the crappy yellow seats that were falling apart


I have two of these Arena Circle seats, which I bought from a classified ad in The Hockey News back in the mid-90s. I've dragged them around the country, through 9 or 10 different moves over 25 years. They came with a seating chart on which their location was noted . . . I haven't seen it for a while but I'm sure I still have it.
 

Spear

Anonymous source FOR HIRE
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Mar 31, 2009
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St. Louis, MO
In honor of Binnington's feistiness....

My fondest memory of the old barn happened on Saturday night Jan 23, 1993. Got tickets sitting 4 rows up from the glass, looking straight down the blue line where the melee fully blossomed against the Red Wings with CuJo and Cheveldae squaring-off. What a night!
 

parliamentlite

Registered User
Feb 26, 2019
321
429
The old Arena is long gone, although I miss it every time I drive past the old site.

I saw many games there. In the early years of the francise, people got dressed up to go the hockey game. Some men wore coats and ties. Women wore skirts. People could and did smoke in the stands.

There was plenty of fighting on the ice and that attracted a rowdy kind of fan. Fans occasionally fought in the stands or in the corridors. Lots of Hawk fans would come in and taunt the St. Louis fans with insulting signs.

Hockey has become more polite on the ice and in the stands. But it was sure fun to watch Bob Gassoff beat the tar out of opposing thugs.

Please share your memories of the old place.

I've posted this here before, but it still seems appropriate to this thread. A certain member of my direct family and some of his friends make appearances early in this video so it holds some extra appeal to me. Captures most of the Blues at the Arena period in the process.

 

Jim ODonnell

Registered User
Dec 20, 2018
26
33
I've posted this here before, but it still seems appropriate to this thread. A certain member of my direct family and some of his friends make appearances early in this video so it holds some extra appeal to me. Captures most of the Blues at the Arena period in the process.


Thank you for posting this, I look forward to checking it out.
 
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Xerloris

reckless optimism
Jun 9, 2015
6,912
7,522
St.Louis
I have such fond memories of the Arena.

I went to the Barnum and Bailey Circus there as a kid and found out I am terribly allergic to Elephants.
Went to St.Louis Steamers games there.
Went to one Blues game before they switched to the Kiel.
Also as a small kid I was terribly scared of the seating there, it was so f***ing steep!
 

Bernie Federko

Registered User
Jun 29, 2018
144
188
Krikee, I used to get straight hammered there in the late 70s. Would always start at the Arena Bowl in the parking lot. The Blues were not very good in that era but the memories sure were.
 
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Kreegz2

Registered User
Dec 11, 2011
919
809
I was barely too young to experience the Arena. I attended my first Blues game at the age of 6 in 1996 at the sparkling new Kiel center. I sometimes wish I was a decade older so that I could have fully experienced the old barn in its glory.
 

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