St. Nicholas Rink
| "The Rink" | |
1901 pleasure skating
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 St. Nicholas Rink
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| Address | 69 West 66th Street |
|---|---|
| Location | New York City, New York, United States |
| Coordinates | 40°46′23.68″N 73°58′49.32″W / 40.7732444°N 73.9803667°W |
| Type |
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| Surface | ice |
| Opened | November 7, 1896 |
| Closed | May 28, 1962 |
The St. Nicholas Rink, also called the St. Nicholas Arena, was an indoor ice rink, and later a boxing arena in New York, New York, from 1896 until 1962. The rink was one of the earliest indoor ice rinks made of mechanically frozen ice in North America, (others including the North Avenue Ice Palace in Baltimore, Maryland and the Ice Palace in New York, both opened in 1894), enabling a longer season for skating sports. It was demolished in the 1980s.
As a rink, it was used for pleasure skating, and the sports of ice hockey and skating. It was an important rink in the development of both sports in the United States. As a boxing arena, it was one of the first legal venues for boxing and remained a busy venue until its closing, although as the popularity of boxing grew, the sport outgrew the capacity of the arena to hold title fights. The arena hosted live boxing on television.
St. Nicholas Rink opened November 7, 1896, at 69 West 66th Street, on the northeast corner of 66th Street and Columbus Avenue. The builders included Cornelius Vanderbilt and John Jacob Astor. Flagg and Chambers were the architects. Before the construction of the building, the St. Nicholas Skating Club had been using an outdoor flooded lot.
The ice rink used a mechanically frozen ice or "artificial ice" surface using techniques developed at the Glaciarium in London, England. A basement ice-making factory shared the ice-making equipment. Another New York skating venue, the Ice Palace, opened shortly before the St. Nicholas Arena. A third artificial ice rink, the Brooklyn Ice Palace opened in 1896, to provide three artificial ice rinks in New York City.
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