Buffalo Memorial Auditorium

The Aud Today

The Sabres played at the Aud for 26 years, but the Aud had been around for longer than that. It was originally built in 1940 as a WPA(*, see bottom) project to house hockey and basketball, and was constantly expanded. When the NHL decided to expand from 12 to 14 teams for the 1970 NHL season, the Aud was once again expanded to accomodate the Buffalo Sabres. The rink was smaller than regulation, measuring in at 193' X 84'. The Aud's capacity was 16,433. The scoreboard was horrendously inadequate, with no video board at all and room for the score, time, period, and a few penalties. However, the scoreboard was perfect because it did what scoreboards should: provide information without distracting from the game. The new board at the HSBCA only functions to distract the fans from the game. I found that the games I have been to there are boring, slow, and filled with many things to take fans' minds off of the game they paid to see in the first place. (Whoever invented the T-Shirt cannon should be shot with one. Repeatedly.)

The fans loved the Aud. It had absolutely terrific sightlines, with only two rows of semi-obstructed-view seats. (I was lucky enough to sit in one.) There were only eight fully obstructed view seats in the entire arena. Although the building lacked the class of the Montreal Forum or the atmosphere of the Chicago Stadium, it was still a rowdy, rollicking good time where the game was always the first thing on people's minds. The bottom row of the arena was the Lower Gold section, which was all temp seating that brought fans right down to the ice level. The lowest permanent level was the Upper Gold, which I sat in once. Above that was the Reds, then the Blues. The upper deck was the Oranges. The semi-obstructed view seating was the last two rows of the blue section, which was partially blocked off by the upper deck hanging over to provide a great view from up there. Underneath, though, it was hot, the scoreboard was nearly invisible, and the ice was almost blocked off. To get an idea of the obstruction, try watching a game with everything above forehead level invisible.

At the end of its hockey life, the Aud was off of the last stop of the inner-city train. It still is, and on game night, thousands of fans pour off of the train at the stop marked "Auditorium." They are no longer going in, though, they're walking to the Marine Midland Arena. From the outside, the Aud looks, well, awful to a casual observer. It is government post-office styled, with a giant brown aluminum roof. Half of the building has been wrapped in aluminum due to constant expansions. There is, however, an architechtural beauty and class to the place. The constant expansions make it impossible to copy. The frieze, the soundness of its design, and the strength are things that are noticable to a trained eye. While it may not have the magnificent Art Deco facade of Maple Leaf Gardens or the church-like spires and exterior of the Boston Garden, the Aud had a certain architechtural dignity to it. Even in the boarded-up state of disrepair that it exists in today, there is still an air of class that one cannot fabricate. Once inside, you were on the ice level; the lower golds. From there, you walked up half blue, half grey (grey on top) ramps to get to your seat. There were areas of the building where you had to walk down to get to an upper seat. Assuming your ticket was in the oranges, you went all the way to the top. Once at the top, you went over to an impossibly steep balcony and walked straight down to your seat. the ice looked impossibly glowing in an aura of white, as the Sabres, resplendent in white with blue and gold, warmed up in front of your eyes. From the last row of the oranges, you still seemed impossibly close to the action, plus the overhang of the deck was such that you got the impression that if you were to throw a puck off the deck, it would land easily on the ice. It was easy to get from one area to another, and the concession hallway in the lower golds was right by the dressing rooms and the Zamboni garage, so much so that the players had to walk past the fans through the concessions to get to the dressing room. The Zamboni drove past the souvenir stand three times a night also.

At the end of the 1996 hockey season, the Sabres closed up the Aud in a star-studded night with a win over Hartford. Former owner Seymour H. Knox III would die within a month of the last game, and the HSBCA would be his legacy to the city. The franchise was bought by the Empire Sports Network. Upon moving, the old retired numbers of the French connection and the championship banners were moved to the rafters of the new arena. The new uniforms had been unveiled to widespread support a few days prior to the final game in a ceremony that attracted 20,000 people. The support may have been widespread, but that doesn't make it right. The class and dignity of a once-proud organization has been callously abandoned in the endless quest for profit.

Today, the Aud sits lonely and abandoned. The giant hulk of the building sits in winter watching fans in black and red sweaters get off of the train every game night and walk away, most not noticing the building. The doors have all been boarded up and there is no clue that this magnificent strucure was once the greatest hockey arena in the history of the sport. In winter, the snow sits unplowed from the doors of the building. When the HSBCA was built with taxpayer dollars, the city-owned Aud was closed as part of a promise to keep the HSBCA as the only concert and entertainment arena in the city.

It is a sad end to a once proud building. As hockey author, and classic Sabres fan Jeff Z. Klein says, "In the economically depressed downtown of modern Buffalo, there are no demands upon the city to tear it down. It is structurally safe, and no one wants to move onto the land, so it probably will stay as an unused hulk for a long time into the future."

Once the team left, the Aud was more or less abandoned as well. As Sabres fan, author, and former Aud season ticket holder Karl-Eric Reif says: "As for what's left in the Aud, well, I must admit I haven't been inside since it was closed. But my Sabre sources (not highly placed, alas) tell me that all the museum display-case sort of stuff has been moved to the Marina -- some of it on display, some not -- but all the real infrastructure stuff -- the seats, the lights, whatever -- remains right where it was, since no decision has been made on what to do with the building, and future use as a facility for amateur and youth sports remains one suggestion. There is one entrance, but only municipal personnel are allowed inside."

What does the future hold? The most common plan for the Aud being thrown around is to turn it into a new transportation center, or a sporting goods megastore, or, well, you name it. See the article list on the front page. I haven't seen the plans, but apparently the Aud's lobby is to remain the same while the arena floor is to become a joint bus and train station. Sacrilege? Sure! But I have to admit that it's better than demolition. What do Buffalonians think? I haven't heard.

*For those who don't know what WPA is, Karl Reif says: "WPA" stands for Works Progress Administration. It was one of many US governmental departments created, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, by US President Roosevelt to create jobs for Americans. The WPA instigated and oversaw the design and construction of thousands of municipal projects across the entire country, from sports arenas (like the Aud) to government buildings to dams and bridges and locks. Just about every public building constucted in the US from the early '30s until World War II was put up under the aegis of the WPA, and the sort of modernist, neo-classical friezes (and similar murals inside many of the structures) make it easily identifiable as a WPA project."

P.S. As a baseball fan (Go Cubs), I'm equally apalled at the closing of the great old ballparks. I believe that Fenway Park and Wrigley Field should be saved, as they are the only remaining links to the past in all of professional sports. (Yankee Stadium, due to the Steinbrenner renovations, doesn't really count in my opinion.) Go. See the game the way that millions have before you. Enjoy the history which North America seems bent on destroying before it's gone forever.