Civic Arena (Pittsburgh)

Civic Arena (formerly the Civic Auditorium and later Mellon Arena) was an arena located in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Civic Arena primarily served as the home to the Pittsburgh Penguins, the city’s National Hockey League (NHL) franchise, from 1967 to 2010.

Constructed in 1961 for use by the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera (CLO), it was the brainchild of department store owner Edgar J. Kaufmann. It was the first retractable roof major-sports venue in the world, covering 170,000 sq. feet, constructed with nearly 3,000 tons of Pittsburgh steel and supported solely by a massive 260-foot-long cantilevered arm on the exterior. Even though it was designed and engineered as a retractable roof dome, the operating cost and repairs to the hydraulic jacks halted all full retractions after 1995, and the roof stayed permanently closed after 2001. The first roof opening structure was during a July 4, 1962, Carol Burnett show to which she exclaimed “Ladies and Gentlemen…I present the sky!”