Architecture On Ice: A History of Hockey Arenas

There is an interesting new (and thick!) book looking at the history of hockey arenas. It is written by Montrealer Howard Shubert.

Here is more from the Montreal Gazette:

For Shubert, a former curator at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the idea of writing about hockey arenas began with questions that were raised in the mid-’90s. At that time, venerable palaces like Maple Leaf Gardens, Boston Garden, Chicago Stadium and, yes, the Montreal Forum were being torn down or gutted and replaced by the crop of places — most, in the new parlance, called “Centres” — where professional hockey is now being played.

“At the time that this was happening, people were saying: ‘These (new) buildings aren’t the same. What’s going on here?’ ” said Shubert, who attended Canadiens games with his father as a child in the ’60s. “There was talk of American influence, of money and financial interests overtaking sport. In thinking about all that, it struck me how little has been written about the history of these buildings, and about the buildings as buildings.”