Boston’s Matthews Arena to close after 100-plus years of hockey, hoops and even the Sultan of Swat

Older than Fenway Park, older than both Boston Gardens, older than the Bruins and Celtics and the NBA and NHL, too.

Matthews Arena will be closing its doors this week after more than a century of hosting the biggest names not just in sports but also politics, music and culture. Now owned by Northeastern University, the 115-year-old barn will say goodbye when the Huskies play Beanpot rival Boston University in hockey on Saturday night. It will be replaced by a multipurpose arena and recreation center on the same site.

“It’ll be bigger and greater,” Northeastern and Hockey Hall of Famer David Poile said in an recent interview with The Associated Press. ”But for those of us that were lucky enough to play there, we’ll always have those memories.”

The building that opened as Boston Arena on April 16, 1910, served as the original home of the Boston Bruins, and also hosted the first Celtics game, too — giving birth to the team’s iconic parquet floor.

Along the way it hosted both President Roosevelts, along with William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover and future presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. Aviators Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart were feted there. Concerts featured Marvin Gay, the Supremes, Chubby Checker, Jerry Lee Lewis, Shirley Jones, Bob Dylan, Phish and Ludacris.

But mostly, it was, as the promotional materials billed it, “The largest, most complete and most elaborate temple erected for the devotees of sport in the world.” Even as the paint peeled and the bricks began to crumble, it remained a no less historic destination than its more famous Boston brethren on Lansdowne and Causeway Streets.

“I like to be in places where men were men and basketball was basketball instead of what we have sometimes now,” said Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo, who brought the Spartans to play Northeastern in 2015 — a rare visit from a top team to the home of a mid-major opponent.

“In those places … you dove for a loose ball on the sidelines and you’d land in the fans," said Izzo, who also made it a point to visit the Palestra in Philadelphia. “I like to get to every place that I’ve never been to that has history; and those two were high on my list. I’ve been to Cameron (Indoor Stadium at Duke) and others, but that was a special treat that night.”

From Boston Arena to Matthews

When it opened as the Boston Arena in 1910, the building was to host skating exhibitions, curling, horse shows and track meets. But after a fire took down the original structure in 1918, the rebuilt arena became a mainstay for ice hockey.

The Bruins played there until the original Boston Garden opened in 1928. Before they were the Carolina Hurricanes or even the Hartford Whalers, the New England Whalers of the World Hockey Association shared ice time with local colleges.

Northeastern moved in when hockey became a varsity sport in 1929. The school bought the building in 1979 and it went by Northeastern Arena for three years before it was renamed in honor of the university’s former chairman, George Matthews.

A 1995 renovation expanded the ice sheet to 200 by 90 feet, and for the building’s 100th birthday it was given a new roof, press box and video scoreboard. A brick and glass facade now welcomes visitors before they step into the historic Victorian foyer.

Big names stopped by

Before Babe Ruth became the Sultan of Swat with the New York Yankees, he was just a Red Sox left-hander passing his winters playing pickup hockey at Boston Arena.

Boxers Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney and Joe Louis all checked out fights, decades before Marvelous Marvin Hagler used the arena as a steppingstone to the middleweight championship. Paavo Nurmi, the “Flying Finn,” competed in a Boston Athletic Association track meet.

Political rallies brought in once and future U.S. presidents. Sonja Henie skated there after winning her first of three Olympic gold medals, and it’s where Nancy Kerrigan made her return after being knee-clubbed in the runup to the 1994 Winter Games.

When Reggie Lewis died, more than 12,000 people turned out for the funeral and viewing at the arena.

A series of farewells

The Huskies held a ceremony during their last men’s basketball game at Matthews, on Nov. 15 against Vermont, with dozens of hoops alumni taking the court at halftime. Northeastern Hall of Famer Keith Motley thanked the fans for a century of support and the players who “made it into the place that it is today.”

“I stand before you today, in a place that is steeped in history, that is steeped with emotion,” said Motley, who went on to coach the Huskies under Jim Calhoun and then serve as the chancellor of UMass-Boston. “May the spirit of winning that started at Matthews Arena continue through the history.”

That was followed by the final women’s hockey game on Dec. 6, with a pregame puck drop featuring some of the school’s Olympians and a postgame salute to the Doghouse fan section.

The finale comes Saturday night, with the final men’s hockey game.

Poile, a former Washington Capitals and Nashville Predators general manager who still holds the Northeastern record with 11 hat tricks, said he remembers arriving as a 17-year-old freshman in 1967, surprised by the egg-shaped playing surface that had no corners.

But he didn’t really appreciate the history.

“When I played there and then, of course, after, it always has grown on me,” said Poile, who will take part in Saturday’s ceremony. “To be asked to participate in the final game is such a huge honor and will be kind of that icing on the cake in terms of all the memories I had with Northeastern, both in hockey and school, and all the things that I did there in Boston.”

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