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Chicago Stadium
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Chicago Stadium
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| Championships | 1st 1991 |
2nd 1992 |
3rd 1993 |
4th 1996 |
5th 1997 |
6th 1998 |
On March 27, 1998 Mark J Thornton writes:
My Dad, Frank Thornton, was the stadium supper from 1967 until he had a stroke and retired in 1977. During this time our family lived, breathed and coped with the goings on of this great building. I worked with the building engineers in the summer and spent a 6 month period as a stationary engineer during the fall of 1972. It is still hard for me to believe that they would allow this building to be torn down. I spent nights walking the lower level on my rounds. My dad told me there were ghosts in the lower levels but I never believed him until I spent 6 months on the 4:00 pm to midnight shift.The tunnel, the fan rooms above the second floor balconies, the piano bar behind the ticket office that was shut down the night Brian Topping broke up with Sonia Henie (closed off for 30 years). The place had a soul, and they would all come out at night.
During his years at the stadium my dad was involved with the opening of the Sonia Henie storage locker, the piano bar, and the refurbishment of the old fan rooms where a 2000 ton Carrier water chiller was added for air conditioning.
Up above the lights and the scoreboard was a world that few in Chicago knew existed. This was the location of the various pipes and speakers for the stadium pipe organ. It was a maze of maple boxes and tubes all located within a 20 by 20 room high over center ice. The room was connected by catwalks that led over to the four corner fanrooms. Access to these rooms, and the organ "speaker house" was via a ladder out of a storage/slopsink room on the second balcony level. Few people that worked at the stadium ever got up to the fanrooms, and fewer yet ever got over to the "speaker house." Entering the "speaker house" was like being in a time warp. The room was filled with old newspapers and magazines from as far back as the forties. It was the perfect place to bring something to read and leave, and it really showed. It was also filled with discarded cigarette wrappers and coke and various other soft drink bottles from a bygone era. Passing through this room during a hockey or basketball game, it was hard not to stop and start reading the papers. I was born in 1951, and most of the papers then (1972) were older than I was.
Outside on the catwalk was the greatest view of the ice that anyone could ever imagine. You could see the plays taking place like on a coaches chalkboard. I remember watching Bobby Orr once from this vantage point. He literally skated rings around everyone. It would have been a great to have a camera, but if you ever dropped anything, it would have been right on one of the players or the ice. I was always afraid of dropping my flashlight.
The old fanrooms were like a scene from an old Flash Cordon movies (circa 1930). They design was called "water wash" in which the air was run through a water spray system which raises its humidity, but lowers its temperature. It worked well when it was designed because the hockey season ended in the late winter or early spring. But turned the place into a fog bank during the final game of the Stanley Cup finals with Montreal in May of 1971. A modern HVAC system was installed in the stadium because of this condition and this game. No more Jacque Lemaire slapshots from the blue line getting lost in the clouds.
August 7, 1998 - I've got exclusive footage of the removal of the Barton organ including interviews with various people all unedited on broadcast betacam. About 8 hours over a period of 90 days! I'm trying to raise $15,000 to edit all this tape and present it for sale on VHS. There was so much outrage during the demolition of the Stadium and now we want to save a piece of history with this project. Email me if you have any money to contribute or intrest in helping to raise some money.
Dale Pfeiffer
P.S. Did you know that the organ was destroyed in an October fire last year!My dad had an office in the northest corner on the main floor. He had been the building supper for the Chicago Furniture Mart, but was moved over to the Stadium by the old man (Art Wirtz) in 1966. The condition of the Stadium was so bad that nobuddy wanted to go to the games. He re-did the bathrooms in red Italian tile and cleaned the place from head to toe. Many said it was the best they had ever seen the stadium, and his ice was the best in the league, per the league president. My dad ran a crew of 20 to 30 people and I remember stories on all of them. I'd love to right a book about the place. I was in my early twenties when I worked there and the stories and the incidents are in my mind like they were yesterday. These were the last healthy days my dad had before his stroke and he absolutley loved the work he did and the building. He also worked with a real cast of characters. Joe, Harvey, Bud & Gene, Dela, Spyder, Tommy. What a group, what a Stadium. I can't believe they torn it down. I still have a brick from the ruins, and a brass presser guage from one of the old DC sets in the boilder room that were used for the old spot lights. It was Chicago, it was a past that belongs to all of us who remember.
On December 12, 1998 Dennis Gruse wrote: Your page just stirred up all kinds of nostalgic memories for me even though I've been away from the Chicago area for the most part since moving to the South in 1979.
I remember going to the Stadium even as a high school kid with my uncle each year to see the Daily News Relays, back when track was still a major attraction away from Olympics time.
And how about those college basketball double headers. Like the year Loyola went all the way in the NCAA and played in a double header with two other major ranked teams to an overflowing standing room crowd. I stood through all of the first game and much of the second before some seats became available for my group. The next day's paper carried a crowd photo showing fans even sitting above on the steel beams.
There were many other great college games and teams playing there too that I saw in the 60s and 70s, such as UCLA's early John Wooden teams with kids like Gail Goodrich and Adolph Rupp's many times champion Kentucky Wildcats. I believe they wore the NCAA champ number on their wamup suits.
I remember seeing Paul Westphal glow with a Southern Cal team that otherwise flickered.
The memories go on and on, including the game I had highly coveted tickets for that was to highlight a young player from UCLA who still called himself Lew Alcindor. It was his first year of college ball, and his abundant scoring was packing the stadiums. But frigid temperatures made it uncomfortable to risk traveling into the stadium's declining neighborhood and risk that the car might not start when we finally got to it after the game. So, like many others that night, I stayed at home. I still regret it some 30-plus years later.
Yes, the stadium was the big site for big college games back then. Likewise, college basketball was big for the stadium too. For back until the Bulls came, there were no pro games played there.
Of course, the Stadium had a few drawbacks by then. I've already mentioned the neighborhood's deterioraion. Coming in from the Western suburbs, we always felt our car was safer leaving it in the suburbs where the CTA el route began and getting off at the stadium exit--back then we worried more about our vehicle's safety than our physical security. And you always prayed that your seat didn't leave you trying to look around one of the beams. Later, when I had a connection for comp tickets on the floor, I'd get cold feet from the hockey ice that remained under the temporary court's flooring.
A little known fact about the Old Statium: In 1932, it was the place where the First indoor NFL game was held.
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