Oakland | 1908

“If Minnesota is the State of Hockey, if Detroit is Hockeytown and if Buffalo is the City of Hockey, then surely this city at the confluence of three rivers is Hockeytahn, as they say here in their singular drawl.”

That’s how The New York Times began a 2010 article on the city’s importance in the history of hockey. And perhaps no moment from the city’s hockey history is more important than when Christopher Magee converted a trolley barn in Oakland into a ice rink and auditorium in 1896.

Dubbed the Duquesne Gardens, the arena would soon become the “preeminent hockey building in America” and “make the city … a hotbed for hockey in the early part of the century,” the PG’s Ed Bouchette wrote. With its famous artificial ice, the Gardens was the first arena to attract players from Canada to play professionally in the US.

The Pittsburgh Press reported on a night at the Gardens in 1908 that saw games between all four teams in the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League, which is said to be the first professional hockey league in the world.

“Professional hockey pleased hundreds at the Duquesne Gardens last night,” the Press reported. “Two swift games were presented. The players were full of vim and played hockey at all stages.”

In 1920, the U.S. men’s national team was founded at the Gardens. The squad would go on to win silver at the sport’s Olympics debut. And from 1925 to 1930 the Gardens was home to the Pittsburgh Pirates, the city’s first NHL team, and a slew of minor league and semi-pro teams.

Though the arena was once unparalleled for its size and ice making technology, it was antiquated by the late 1920s, when the Madison Square Garden and Boston Garden could fit twice as many fans as Pittsburgh’s arena.

The arena was demolished in 1956 to make room for an apartment building, leaving Pittsburgh without a hockey arena until the Civic Arena opened in 1961. The NHL returned to the city six years later when the Penguins were founded.