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The Philadelphia Flyers will remember The Spectrum when they return to their former home, the Wachovia Spectrum, for a preseason contest against the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday, September 27 at 1:00 p.m. Comcast-Spectacor recently announced that this will be the last year of the Wachovia Spectrum at the conclusion of the Philadelphia Phantoms and Philadelphia Kixx, hockey and indoor soccer seasons.
"This will be a wonderful opportunity for thousands of our fans, who used to attend our games at the Spectrum or watch them on TV, to come back one last time and see the Flyers in our old home," said Comcast-Spectacor Chairman Ed Snider. "It'll also be the last chance for others who may have never seen the Flyers play at the Spectrum. It will be a highly emotional game for me, personally."
"Bringing the Flyers back to the Spectrum for a preseason game will be the perfect start of a season-long celebration of the Spectrum," said Comcast-Spectacor President Peter A. Luukko. "We will continue to bring events to the Spectrum this year to celebrate the wonderful memories and proud tradition of the famous arena."
Philadelphia Flyers release -- July 31, 2008
The Spectrum
While the massive "Coliseum" in Rome has not hosted a "show" of any kind for many many centuries, at least it is still there, and so are many other places of public entertainment in Europe and the rest of the world that have not been otherwise destroyed by war or natural disaster. However in the "throw away" culture of North America (where only one real "modern war" -- the American "Civil War" -- has ever been fought), arenas and stadiums (and buildings of all kinds for that matter) seem to be almost as disposable as yesterday's newspaper (and you may not be able to find one of those in the years to come either).
In my home town of Philadelphia, for instance, such former houses of sporting glory as the Baker Bowl, Connie Mack Stadium (formerly called Shibe Park), the The Philadelphia Arena (at 46th & Market Streets), Convention Hall, Municipal Stadium (later called JFK Stadium), and Veterans Stadium are all gone, as are many of the great theaters of my childhood that once populated the city such as the Mastbaum, Erlanger, Boyd, Locust Street, Earle, Goldman, Stanton, Orpheum, Palace, Randolph, Plaza, and Metropolitan Opera House among others. And it is now certain that sometime next year one of the greatest of all of the city's palaces of culture and sport will fall as well -- The Spectrum.
The Philadelphia Arena (1920-1983)
...the Philadelphia hockey home (1927-64) of the...
Arrows, Ramblers, Comets, Quakers, Falcons, & Rockets
The 2008-09 hockey season will be my fortieth one in the game, and I have spent as many as fifty nights or so of every one of those at the Spectrum watching an NHL or AHL hockey game. I will do so again this season as the AHL Phantoms play their twelfth -- and apparently last -- season there. I, of course, have many many memories of both gloom and glory about the Spectrum, and from time to time over the course of this final season for my second favorite arena (Hersheypark Arena will always be number one with me because my history with that rink goes back even farther) I will relate some of those in this space.
This time, however, I will tell the story of how the Philadelphia Flyers -- and thus The Spectrum -- came into being in the first place.
When the NHL announced in 1965 that it was going to double in size from six teams to twelve beginning with the 1967-68 season, Philadelphia, PA, looked like quite a longshot to get one of those half dozen new franchises if, for no other reason, than no adequate arena for such a team to play in was either in place or on the drawing board. At a minimum, the league had announced that it would require a 12,500-seat indoor facility be already available (or construction committed to) for a franchise bid to even be accepted for consideration. While minor professional hockey had been played in the city more or less continuously since 1927, the only brush that Philadelphia had ever had with the NHL came for just one awful season (1930-31) with the worst team (4-36-4) in the history of the league -- the Philadelphia Quakers -- which 78 years later still holds the league record for the fewest wins in a season at just four!
The 1930-31 NHL Philadelphia Quakers (4-36-4)
In 1965 the only existing building that had ever hosted pro hockey in Philadelphia was the old, and by then considerably run down "Arena" in West Philadelphia -- a 1920 vintage structure with barely 6,000 seats and virtually no parking. Although the NBA Philadelphia 76'ers played only a few blocks away from the Arena in the city's 1930's WPA era Civic Center Convention Hall, that building had no permanent ice plant and could seat no more than 8,500. (Later the WHA Philadelphia Blazers (1972-73) and the NAHL (1974-77)/AHL (1977-79) Philadelphia Firebirds would use that facility for hockey playing on a portable rink.)
Civic Center Convention Hall
Philadelphia, PA (1931-2005)
...which was the home of the...
Philadelphia Blazers (WHA 1972-73); Philadelphia Firebirds
(NAHL 1974-77; AHL 1977-79)
A group of businessmen that included then Eagles' Vice President Edward M. Snider, Jerry Wolman, Earl Foreman, and Bill Putnam put together a bid for an NHL expansion franchise for the city. When it was determined that the necessary new arena with a seating for approximately 15,000 could be built in time for the 1967-68 season, the group began planning in earnest. On Tuesday, February 8, 1966, after a year of almost secret preparation, the Philadelphia group made its presentation before a meeting of the NHL Board of Governors in New York City along with a dozen other expansion franchise applicants from a total of eight cities.
Although many hockey people had long known about the Philadelphia group's interest (as did City Hall), the formal submission of the proposal came as an almost complete surprise to Philadelphia's sports fans. Although the Philadelphia group had made an excellent proposal, so did many of the other groups. Whether or not Philadelphia would get one of the six prized franchises was no sure thing.
The 1967 NHL Expansion Teams
The next day, however, the NHL announced that Philadelphia was indeed one of the six winners in the expansion derby. Along with the other new entries to be located in Minneapolis-St. Paul (Minnesota), Pittsburgh, Oakland, St. Louis, and Los Angeles, Philadelphia would join the league's new "West" Division and begin play in just twenty months. In the meantime each new club would have to pay the league an entry fee of $2,000,000 -- pocket chage by today's standards -- and find a place to play that met the NHL's requirements.
While three of the new cities (St. Louis, Oakland, and Pittsburgh) had suitable existing buildings already available, the franchises in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Minnesota would have to build new ones from scratch. A site in Philadelphia was quickly made available by the city -- a municipally owned five acre tract adjacent to the then existing 1926 vintage 100,000-seat JFK (formerly called Municipal) Stadium, the long time home of the Army-Navy Game, at the South end of Broad Street just north of the sprawling U.S. Navy Yard. Once part of the grounds of the 1926 Sesqui-Centennial Exposition, the site had later been used for a drive-in movie theater.
Philadelphia Municipal Stadium (1926), and future site of The Spectrum
On May 19, 1966 -- eight years to the day before the Flyers would bring the Stanley Cup to Philadelphia -- the city granted a 50-year lease for the land, and twelve days later on June 1st -- less than four months after the NHL awarded Philadelphia its franchise -- ground was broken at the corner of Broad Steet and Pattison Avenues for the new arena, The Spectrum.
The Spectrum while under construction
While the new NHL hockey team, the Philadelphia Flyers, was to be the building's principal tenant, the NBA 76'ers quickly agreed to move from Convention Hall to the new facility as well. Together these two clubs immediately guaranteed the new arena up to one hundred dates a year. Ice shows, other indoor sporting events, circuses, concerts and other shows would soon add another 150 or more dates annually to the building's calendar eventually making it one of the busiest arenas in the country.
The crowds were sparse at the beginning -- but not for long.
The Spectrum was finished in 16 months at a cost of $7 million. The expansion Flyers had a good deal of success on the ice in their first year (finishing first in the West) although crowds were slow to build. The most memorable event of the inaugural season, however, came on March 1, 1968, when high winds blew a portion of the covering of the Spectrum's roof off during a performance of the Ice Capades forcing the building to close for a month while the damage was repaired.
While the 76ers were able to move their home games to Convention Hall or to the Palestra, neither of those arenas had ice rinks at the time and there were no other NHL-quality sites in the Philadelphia area. Thus the Flyers hurriedly moved their next home game (against the Oakland Seals) to Madison Square Garden in New York followed by a meeting with the Boston Bruins played at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto (a game which featured the famous stick fight between Flyers defenseman Larry "The Rock" Zeidel and Boston's Eddie "The Entertainer" Shack) before establishing a base at Le Colisée in Quebec City, home of their top minor league team, the AHL Quebec Aces, for the remainder of their regular season home schedule. The roof was repaired in time to permit the Flyers to return to the Spectrum to open their first ever Stanley Cup play-offs against the St. Louis Blues on April 4, 1968, but the Flyers lost that series.
Three-and-a-half years after the Spectrum hosted its first event (an ice show) in September, 1967, construction on the city's long awaited new 65,000-seat multi-purpose outdoor sports facility, Veterans Stadium, was completed. Located directly across Pattison Avenue from the the Spectrum, the Vet opened its gates in April, 1971, as the NL Philadelphia Phillies hosted the Montreal Expos, the same club that had helped them close their old park, Connie Mack Stadium, at 21st & Lehigh in North Philadelphia the previous September. They were soon followed to "The Vet" by the NFL Eagles who left the University of Pennsylvania's venerable Franklin Field (built 1922-25) in West Philadelphia thereby completing the move of all four of the city's major league clubs to the massive new sports complex.
"The Vet" (1971-2004)
The Vet was, like most of the so-call "multi-purpose" facilities built in the 1970's for both baseball and football, not really well suited for either purpose, and most of them -- like the Vet -- are now gone. The Vet closed after little more than three decades and was replaced by the Citizens Bank Park (baseball) and Lincoln Financial Field (football). Closed in 2003, the Vet was demolished in 2004 and the site is now occupied by a parking lot. Along with the Wachovia Center, these four facilities now make up the massive South Philadelphia Sports Complex, but with the announcement last fall of the development and a new shopping center complex to be called "Philly Live" to occupy the parking lot between the Center and the Spectrum -- and a new hotel to go where the Spectrum now stands -- the fate of "America's Showplace" became sealed by "progress" and another one of America's great palaces of sport will fall to the wrecker's ball. After much discussion, the closing of the Spectrum itself at the end of the 2008-09 hockey season became official with a formal announcement by Comcast-Spectacor chairman Ed Snider on July 14, 2008.
The memories will remain for me and millions of others, but the old barn will still be sadly, sadly missed.
"This will be a wonderful opportunity for thousands of our fans, who used to attend our games at the Spectrum or watch them on TV, to come back one last time and see the Flyers in our old home," said Comcast-Spectacor Chairman Ed Snider. "It'll also be the last chance for others who may have never seen the Flyers play at the Spectrum. It will be a highly emotional game for me, personally."
"Bringing the Flyers back to the Spectrum for a preseason game will be the perfect start of a season-long celebration of the Spectrum," said Comcast-Spectacor President Peter A. Luukko. "We will continue to bring events to the Spectrum this year to celebrate the wonderful memories and proud tradition of the famous arena."
Philadelphia Flyers release -- July 31, 2008
While the massive "Coliseum" in Rome has not hosted a "show" of any kind for many many centuries, at least it is still there, and so are many other places of public entertainment in Europe and the rest of the world that have not been otherwise destroyed by war or natural disaster. However in the "throw away" culture of North America (where only one real "modern war" -- the American "Civil War" -- has ever been fought), arenas and stadiums (and buildings of all kinds for that matter) seem to be almost as disposable as yesterday's newspaper (and you may not be able to find one of those in the years to come either).
In my home town of Philadelphia, for instance, such former houses of sporting glory as the Baker Bowl, Connie Mack Stadium (formerly called Shibe Park), the The Philadelphia Arena (at 46th & Market Streets), Convention Hall, Municipal Stadium (later called JFK Stadium), and Veterans Stadium are all gone, as are many of the great theaters of my childhood that once populated the city such as the Mastbaum, Erlanger, Boyd, Locust Street, Earle, Goldman, Stanton, Orpheum, Palace, Randolph, Plaza, and Metropolitan Opera House among others. And it is now certain that sometime next year one of the greatest of all of the city's palaces of culture and sport will fall as well -- The Spectrum.
The Philadelphia Arena (1920-1983)
...the Philadelphia hockey home (1927-64) of the...
Arrows, Ramblers, Comets, Quakers, Falcons, & Rockets
The 2008-09 hockey season will be my fortieth one in the game, and I have spent as many as fifty nights or so of every one of those at the Spectrum watching an NHL or AHL hockey game. I will do so again this season as the AHL Phantoms play their twelfth -- and apparently last -- season there. I, of course, have many many memories of both gloom and glory about the Spectrum, and from time to time over the course of this final season for my second favorite arena (Hersheypark Arena will always be number one with me because my history with that rink goes back even farther) I will relate some of those in this space.
This time, however, I will tell the story of how the Philadelphia Flyers -- and thus The Spectrum -- came into being in the first place.
When the NHL announced in 1965 that it was going to double in size from six teams to twelve beginning with the 1967-68 season, Philadelphia, PA, looked like quite a longshot to get one of those half dozen new franchises if, for no other reason, than no adequate arena for such a team to play in was either in place or on the drawing board. At a minimum, the league had announced that it would require a 12,500-seat indoor facility be already available (or construction committed to) for a franchise bid to even be accepted for consideration. While minor professional hockey had been played in the city more or less continuously since 1927, the only brush that Philadelphia had ever had with the NHL came for just one awful season (1930-31) with the worst team (4-36-4) in the history of the league -- the Philadelphia Quakers -- which 78 years later still holds the league record for the fewest wins in a season at just four!
The 1930-31 NHL Philadelphia Quakers (4-36-4)
In 1965 the only existing building that had ever hosted pro hockey in Philadelphia was the old, and by then considerably run down "Arena" in West Philadelphia -- a 1920 vintage structure with barely 6,000 seats and virtually no parking. Although the NBA Philadelphia 76'ers played only a few blocks away from the Arena in the city's 1930's WPA era Civic Center Convention Hall, that building had no permanent ice plant and could seat no more than 8,500. (Later the WHA Philadelphia Blazers (1972-73) and the NAHL (1974-77)/AHL (1977-79) Philadelphia Firebirds would use that facility for hockey playing on a portable rink.)
Civic Center Convention Hall
Philadelphia, PA (1931-2005)
...which was the home of the...
Philadelphia Blazers (WHA 1972-73); Philadelphia Firebirds
(NAHL 1974-77; AHL 1977-79)
A group of businessmen that included then Eagles' Vice President Edward M. Snider, Jerry Wolman, Earl Foreman, and Bill Putnam put together a bid for an NHL expansion franchise for the city. When it was determined that the necessary new arena with a seating for approximately 15,000 could be built in time for the 1967-68 season, the group began planning in earnest. On Tuesday, February 8, 1966, after a year of almost secret preparation, the Philadelphia group made its presentation before a meeting of the NHL Board of Governors in New York City along with a dozen other expansion franchise applicants from a total of eight cities.
Although many hockey people had long known about the Philadelphia group's interest (as did City Hall), the formal submission of the proposal came as an almost complete surprise to Philadelphia's sports fans. Although the Philadelphia group had made an excellent proposal, so did many of the other groups. Whether or not Philadelphia would get one of the six prized franchises was no sure thing.
The 1967 NHL Expansion Teams
The next day, however, the NHL announced that Philadelphia was indeed one of the six winners in the expansion derby. Along with the other new entries to be located in Minneapolis-St. Paul (Minnesota), Pittsburgh, Oakland, St. Louis, and Los Angeles, Philadelphia would join the league's new "West" Division and begin play in just twenty months. In the meantime each new club would have to pay the league an entry fee of $2,000,000 -- pocket chage by today's standards -- and find a place to play that met the NHL's requirements.
While three of the new cities (St. Louis, Oakland, and Pittsburgh) had suitable existing buildings already available, the franchises in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Minnesota would have to build new ones from scratch. A site in Philadelphia was quickly made available by the city -- a municipally owned five acre tract adjacent to the then existing 1926 vintage 100,000-seat JFK (formerly called Municipal) Stadium, the long time home of the Army-Navy Game, at the South end of Broad Street just north of the sprawling U.S. Navy Yard. Once part of the grounds of the 1926 Sesqui-Centennial Exposition, the site had later been used for a drive-in movie theater.
Philadelphia Municipal Stadium (1926), and future site of The Spectrum
On May 19, 1966 -- eight years to the day before the Flyers would bring the Stanley Cup to Philadelphia -- the city granted a 50-year lease for the land, and twelve days later on June 1st -- less than four months after the NHL awarded Philadelphia its franchise -- ground was broken at the corner of Broad Steet and Pattison Avenues for the new arena, The Spectrum.
The Spectrum while under construction
While the new NHL hockey team, the Philadelphia Flyers, was to be the building's principal tenant, the NBA 76'ers quickly agreed to move from Convention Hall to the new facility as well. Together these two clubs immediately guaranteed the new arena up to one hundred dates a year. Ice shows, other indoor sporting events, circuses, concerts and other shows would soon add another 150 or more dates annually to the building's calendar eventually making it one of the busiest arenas in the country.
The crowds were sparse at the beginning -- but not for long.
The Spectrum was finished in 16 months at a cost of $7 million. The expansion Flyers had a good deal of success on the ice in their first year (finishing first in the West) although crowds were slow to build. The most memorable event of the inaugural season, however, came on March 1, 1968, when high winds blew a portion of the covering of the Spectrum's roof off during a performance of the Ice Capades forcing the building to close for a month while the damage was repaired.
While the 76ers were able to move their home games to Convention Hall or to the Palestra, neither of those arenas had ice rinks at the time and there were no other NHL-quality sites in the Philadelphia area. Thus the Flyers hurriedly moved their next home game (against the Oakland Seals) to Madison Square Garden in New York followed by a meeting with the Boston Bruins played at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto (a game which featured the famous stick fight between Flyers defenseman Larry "The Rock" Zeidel and Boston's Eddie "The Entertainer" Shack) before establishing a base at Le Colisée in Quebec City, home of their top minor league team, the AHL Quebec Aces, for the remainder of their regular season home schedule. The roof was repaired in time to permit the Flyers to return to the Spectrum to open their first ever Stanley Cup play-offs against the St. Louis Blues on April 4, 1968, but the Flyers lost that series.
Three-and-a-half years after the Spectrum hosted its first event (an ice show) in September, 1967, construction on the city's long awaited new 65,000-seat multi-purpose outdoor sports facility, Veterans Stadium, was completed. Located directly across Pattison Avenue from the the Spectrum, the Vet opened its gates in April, 1971, as the NL Philadelphia Phillies hosted the Montreal Expos, the same club that had helped them close their old park, Connie Mack Stadium, at 21st & Lehigh in North Philadelphia the previous September. They were soon followed to "The Vet" by the NFL Eagles who left the University of Pennsylvania's venerable Franklin Field (built 1922-25) in West Philadelphia thereby completing the move of all four of the city's major league clubs to the massive new sports complex.
"The Vet" (1971-2004)
The Vet was, like most of the so-call "multi-purpose" facilities built in the 1970's for both baseball and football, not really well suited for either purpose, and most of them -- like the Vet -- are now gone. The Vet closed after little more than three decades and was replaced by the Citizens Bank Park (baseball) and Lincoln Financial Field (football). Closed in 2003, the Vet was demolished in 2004 and the site is now occupied by a parking lot. Along with the Wachovia Center, these four facilities now make up the massive South Philadelphia Sports Complex, but with the announcement last fall of the development and a new shopping center complex to be called "Philly Live" to occupy the parking lot between the Center and the Spectrum -- and a new hotel to go where the Spectrum now stands -- the fate of "America's Showplace" became sealed by "progress" and another one of America's great palaces of sport will fall to the wrecker's ball. After much discussion, the closing of the Spectrum itself at the end of the 2008-09 hockey season became official with a formal announcement by Comcast-Spectacor chairman Ed Snider on July 14, 2008.
"This will be the final year of the Spectrum," he said. "This has been one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make. The Spectrum is my baby. It's one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me, but after a lot of thinking and discussions, we all feel it is in our best interest to close the Spectrum at the conclusion of the upcoming 2008-09 Philadelphia Phantoms and Kixx seasons."
The memories will remain for me and millions of others, but the old barn will still be sadly, sadly missed.
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