An often forgotten footnote is that the first NBA games played in Memphis were the eight “home” games played in the Coliseum by the St. J to visit), and countless wrestling matches (which for some is remarkably what the building is remembered for). In addition, the building was home to Memphis Wings ice hockey team (it was mainly about waiting for the fights), the American Basketball Association (it was mainly about waiting for Dr. In the Coliseum’s earliest years, the university played an all-white team, but when it integrated its team in the late 1960s with a single African American player and went to the Final Four in 1973 with a largely African American team, the city’s love of basketball was finally and irrevocably color blind.
In its 42-year history, the Coliseum was the go-to place for legendary concerts and Memphis State University basketball games, where the building design created a loud, dynamic environment. The Coliseum’s first event in October, 1964, was the Ringling Brothers Circus, and it was followed by its first stage show, the WDIA Goodwill Revue, which also was its first sell-out and set an attendance record that stood for years. Before they began architectural drawings, they toured recently built coliseum arenas, and when these visits were concluded, they proposed a coliseum structure whose cost would ultimately be $4.7 million ($36.5 million in today’s money)
Ehrman of Furbringer and Ehrman as lead architect with support from Robert Lee Hall & Associates. City of Memphis and Shelby County, respectively paying 60% and 40% of the costs, selected Merrill G. Multiple locations were evaluated by city-county planners for the Coliseum, including some outside Memphis, but in the end, the Fairgrounds was selected. to the city, it is a historical irony that plans for the building were developed by the Loeb Administration and apparently always envisioned integrated audiences. Considering that Henry Loeb was serving his first term as mayor, and would later be immortalized for the infamous resistance to the unionization of Memphis’ sanitation workers which brought Dr. It was impossible to imagine that another arena in the South could compete with it.Īlthough the building was similar to the coliseums opened in 1960 in Jacksonville and in Mobile in 1965, it was markedly different in one respect: it was not planned as a segregated facility. It was the culmination of a dream that had begun in the late 1950s for a new, all-purpose, “blue chip” public arena, and when the doors were thrown open in 1964, the building produced a burst of civic pride (building on the momentum created by the opening of the Roy Harrover-designed Memphis International Airport a year earlier) not seen again until the opening of AutoZone Park and FedExForum about four decades later.Īnyone who bought a ticket for an event in the Coliseum’s opening year remembers the terrazzo, the brick, the glazed ceramic tiles, the symmetry, easy access, lack of obstructions, and its overall comfort. There has never been an arena built in Memphis with the same quality, acoustics, care, and comfort as the Mid-South Coliseum. In the meantime, here’s an updated version of our earlier Coliseum post: We’ll return to the facts about the TDZ next week. That was proven again yesterday in an article in The Commercial Appeal which misstated the facts about the special tax from left, right, and center. A regular accompaniment to all Fairgrounds and Coliseum discussions is the misinformation and misunderstandings about the Tourism Development Zone. Once again, the Mid-South Coliseum’s future is back in the news, and because of it, we are reprising this August 15, 2016, blog post.
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