Learn all about the fascinating world of figure skating history with Skate Guard Blog.
Explore a treasure trove of articles on the history of figure skating, highlighting Olympic Medallists, World and National Champions and dazzling competitions, shows and tours. Written by former skater and judge Ryan Stevens, Skate Guard Blog also offers intriguing insights into the evolution of the sport over the decades. Delve into Stevens' five books for even more riveting stories and information about the history of everyone's favourite winter Olympic sport.
Fours skating in Boston during World War II. The right two skaters are Gretchen Van Zandt Merrill and Benjamin T. Wright. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.
The skating world lost a true gem when Benjamin T. Wright passed away on November 30, 2019. He was not only an ISU Referee and Judge, USFSA President and chairman of the ISU Technical Committee, but one of the sport's most passionate historians. Without his kind and patient support behind the scenes, Skate Guard wouldn't exist... and that's no overstatement. Until just a few months ago, we had long conversations on the phone regularly and he'd often go digging to find just the information I needed. Many of the stories he helped me with with haven't even been published yet.
Benjamin was a fountain of knowledge. His two thorough and fascinating books on skating history are must haves. He was a man of strong opinions who told it like it was - championing the efforts of skaters and officials who left the sport better than they found it and frankly discussing the ones he felt hadn't. He was there when Dick Button performed the first triple loop and fondly recalled his good friend Cecilia Colledge, who coached in Boston for many years and once lived in the same retirement community he did.
Dennis Bird, Arnold Gerschwiler, Cecilia Colledge, Benjamin T. Wright and Courtney Jones at Richmond Ice Rink in 1985. Photo courtesy "Skate" magazine.
The very first test Benjamin ever judged was a 5th Figure Test, when he was barely twenty. The other two judges, James Tower and Thomas Vinson (Maribel Vinson Owen's father) were in their eighties. He continued to judge dance tests well into his nineties. He felt that the retirement age for ISU officials was too young. If someone still wanted to contribute to the sport, they shouldn't be forced out the door.
Though Benjamin often said he suffered from 'Rodney Dangerfield syndrome' - he didn't "get no respect" - he cared much more about his late wife Mary Louise receiving the credit he never felt she was given than getting a pat on the back himself. Mary Louise was a U.S. Champion in fours skating and judged dance at the World Championships twelve times. He remembered, "I had great respect for her. She made me a better judge and referee... She could take a novice class with twenty five in it, under the old judging system and she'd get it one through twenty five. People would say to her, 'Well, how did you do that?' and she'd say, 'I didn't do anything. I was just one of five judges!'"
Mary Louise and Benjamin were one of only two married couples to serve as skating officials at the same Olympics. He was a referee in Albertville in 1992; she judged dance. The other couple to do so was the Jakobsson's, way back in 1928. They never brought what happened at the rink home with them. "We never discussed her placings," he said. "I respected them. I thought they were right!"
Benjamin had a great respect for the The Skating Club Of Boston's rich skating tradition and had many wonderful stories about Maribel Vinson Owen, Theresa Weld Blanchard, Tenley Albright, Suzanne Davis, Joan Tozzer and skaters from Canada and all over the world who performed in carnivals there. He had grimmer stories too, like having replica trophies made for Gertrude Vinson in the aftermath of the Sabena Crash in 1961.
Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine
Two of my favourite stories Benjamin told were about John Curry and the early days of "Skating" magazine. He recalled, "When John Curry won [gold at the 1976 Olympics in Innsbruck], I said to him... 'John, you gotta go and defend the title that you just won at Worlds.' I said that to Dorothy as well. I said, 'If you don't do that, you're going to regret it for the rest of your life.' We had to go find him, he was on vacation someplace, and we got him to the Worlds and he won, and so did she... and I take full credit for that." In "Skating" magazine's early days, all of the photos and paperwork were kept in a bathtub and Theresa Weld Blanchard tasked him with going through it all and deciding what to keep and what to Marie Kondo. "Whatever I did, I had to make sure no one turned on the water," he laughed.
We can never 'turn the water on' skating's history. Skating's current incarnation is just a blip on a long and storied highway and unless we peer into the pavement cracks and challenge what we think we know, we'll never quite get a handle on the sport's complex evolution. It's now up to all of us to carry on Benjamin T. Wright's important work and trust me, he'd want it done right.
Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.
Hungarian newsprint promoting the 1911 World Championships, depicting previous World Champions Gilbert Fuchs and Ulrich Salchow
In early 1911, Richard Strauss' opera " Der Rosenkavalier" opened in Dresden, Eugene Burton Ely became the first person to land an aircraft on a ship and the world's best figure skaters gathered in Vienna and Berlin to compete at the 1911 World Figure Skating Championships.
The women's and pairs competitions, judged by a panel composed solely of officials from Austria-Hungary and Germany, were held at the Engelmann rink on January 22, 1911. The men's competition was held from February 2 to 3 at the Berlin Eispalast. Let's take a look back at how these historic events in two cities played out! VIENNA
Whether in 1911 or 2011, it's pretty rare for an entire judging panel to agree on the placements of skaters from the start to finish of a competition. However, that's precisely what happened in Vienna in 1911. Lili Kronberger, Zsófia Méray-Horváth and Ludovika (Eilers) Jakobsson all received unanimous first, second and third place ordinals in school figures, free skating and overall. Kronberger won with two hundred and eighty six points and seven ordinal placings, Méray-Horváth had two hundred and sixty points and fourteen ordinal placings and Jakobsson had two hundred and thirty four points and twenty one ordinal placings. Far from controversial, but that's not to say interesting history wasn't made. The aristocratic Kronberger brought with her from Budapest a military band to accompany her free skating program... an unheard of 'attention to detail' in those days. In a gesture of sportsmanship, Kronberger reportedly allowed her competitor Zsófia Méray-Horváth use of her band as well.
The January 23, 1911 issue of the "Neues Wiener Tagblatt" recalled the event thusly: "At 8 o'clock in the morning they began. At noon they came off again, and work was done [on the ice]. The judges still reigned with frozen feet and growling stomachs in their troublesome office. In the short break, the space filled with a distinguished audience. One noticed Wappen der Grafen Kálnoky von Koröspatak, in a box with the sport-friendly mayor, Mr. Heinrich, here with the wife and his two daughters. Ministerial Councillor [Oskar] Schindler and Baron Wetschl from the Ministry of Labor, Mars of the National Association and Eduard Ritter v. Lohr, the President of the Viennese Ice Skating Association taking their places... Fraulein Kronberger, the defender of the championship title [had previously earned] the epithet 'the little Lily' in 1907. How she has changed since then, physically and in her art! She is a lady and a finished skater... Her stiffness has disappeared and also some of her earlier principled mistakes... Only the expert discovers a few small deficiencies, such as the wrong physical attitude with the opposite three-thirds of her figure, which she has not yet fully mastered or the snapping of her large-scale 'male' paragraph. Fraulein Meray v. Horvath and Fraulein Eilers did not reach the champion in the compulsory exercises but both performances were far better than the Sunday before. Fraulein v. Horvath is close to the first class of women. She has her stereotypical style, which has a monotonous effect and seems false. Fraulein Eiler's skating makes you feel natural and unconstrained. It is not forced casual. She gives a very sympathetic impression and attitude. The three graceful ladies were applauded. The music started for the six o'clock [free skating] competition. Miss Kronberger introduced her performance on the ice with elegiac translators. Then Waldteufel's "Les Patineurs" stated and the Budapest woman's dancing spirits seemed to be released... Without ever changing the territory of the ice skating, a formal ballet on the ice was transplanted by her movements.... We do not offer any exaggeration when we say that this was the most beautiful and richest production skated by Miss Kronberger, who seems to have artistic nature. In addition to this masterpiece, the demonstrations of Miss v. Horvath and Miss Eilers took place. There is so much charm in the tasteful style of the two ladies that the spectator does not become tired. The judges really had no easy work."
Though they won the World pairs title in 1911 by acclaim as the only contestants, Ludovika and Walter Jakobsson were still required to meet the ISU's standard of a majority of marks of 4.0 or better from the majority of the judging panel. They accomplished their task with ease, delighting the Viennese crowd in the process. The January 23, 1911 issue of the "Neues Wiener Tagblatt" reported: "The pairs were one highlight of an interesting day. The two have already skated in Vienna in the previous year. They found applause and fascinated with their rhythmic, musical style and wonderful interplay. Their new program is of exquisite taste, the performance error free. You can hardly imagine the level of pairs skating could become even higher."
In conjunction with the women's and pairs competitions, international junior and senior men's competition were held for 'the honorary award of the City of Vienna'. In the senior competition, twenty year old Harald Rooth of Stockholm narrowly lost to Fritz Kachler of the Cottage Eislaufverein. Walter Jakobsson finished third, ahead of Karl Mejstrik and three others. The junior men's event was won by Berlin's Artur Vieregg. BERLIN
Martin Stixrud, Dunbar Poole, Ulrich Salchow, Werner Rittberger, Richard Johansson, Andor Szende and Fritz Kachler at the 1911 World Championships in Berlin.
Hard rain in Stockholm in December of 1910 forced Ulrich Salchow to head to Switzerland to train to win his tenth World title. Though he was happy to avoid "the punch and the smorgasbord" of a Swedish Christmas celebration, he lamented that the climate in St. Moritz "did not really agreed with me." Training conditions improved when he "went down to Mürren in the Bernese Oberland. The location is not quite as high, and my night's sleep, which in St. Moritz left much to be desired, came back and gave me new forces."
When Salchow arrived in Berlin, he found many of his competitors were "criticizing [and] gossiping about each other's faults and virtues." The only three of the men's competitors he claimed weren't talking smack about him were Richard Johansson, Martin Stixrud and Dunbar Poole. Poole was born in Northern Ireland and emigrated to Melbourne in his early twenties. He represented the Stockholms Allmanna Skridskoklubb in Sweden in 1911 but made history as the first Australian skater to compete at the World Championships.
The Scandinavian skaters were all at an extreme disadvantage in Berlin. There was only one Swedish judge, the rest hailing from Austria-Hungary and Germany. Norway's Martin Stixrud didn't have a judge on the panel at all. In the school figures, three judges had Salchow first, three had Fritz Kachler first and one voted for Werner Rittberger. Salchow recalled, "Each time I did a figure, it was a rush to see how to went." Rittberger received loud applause after every figure he performed, much to the irritation of Salchow and some other competitors.
Left: Fritz Kachler. Right: Richard Johansson.
The free skate in Berlin was even closer. A correspondent covering the event for the French magazine "Les Sports d'Hiver" claimed that Sweden's Richard Johansson had the skate of the day "surprising everyone, judges and audience both, with his free skating, rich of before unseen figures, which were often extremely difficult." Salchow, Rittberger, Kachler, Andor Szende and Johansson all received first place ordinals... but most of them were ties. Only one judge, Herr Panek of Austria, failed to tie two or more skaters for first place. When the school figure and free skating scores were tallied, Salchow, Rittberger and Kachler each had two first place ordinals and Johansson had one. By three ordinal placings, Salchow narrowly defended the World title he'd claimed the year prior in Davos... making it a record ten, a feat no other man has managed to duplicate at the Worlds since.
Ulrich Salchow performing school figures
A report appeared in the February 8, 1911 issue of the "Neues Wiener Tagblatt" describing the men's event thusly: "alleging the "In the compulsory exercises Salchow... skated cautiously but had extremely clean execution of the figures. His triple paragraph was the first, also the paragraph loop was very good... His performance was influenced by a bad attitude. He holds his head lowered, the free foot pointed upwards... Dunbar Poole had the most beautiful artistic composition [in the free skate] and succeeded in doing everything he could... Johansson stunned as ever with his brilliant and original program... Salchow had to follow Rittberger, who skated an extraordinary program with his jump. It was the most difficult and most important of all. Salchow overpowered the Berliner
still in difficult figures, but skated more uncertainly than usual. Stixrud revealed the true northern country style, and jumps with great certainty. He has learned a lot and is very much in his own right talented. Kachler disappointed. His program is difficult, but he does not understand all the effects. He pulls in, pulls out and also disrupts his attitude. The evaluation by the judges was quite uneven this time. It had only one common character: the judge's connections with the clubs. We take this occasion... to draw attention to the system that has broken down. Every artist 'brings his judge'. The Troppauer Eislaufverein has for three years, at the World Championship, set a shining example. Its judges have evaluated exclusively for the candidates who are club members." In 1945, Dunbar Poole recalled, "I believe Salchow himself would have been the first to congratulate Rittberger had he beaten him as the rest of the competitors, including myself, considered [it] quite likely to happen. I personally had nothing to complain of as far as the judging was concerned but was genuinely befuddled over some of the judges' placings of Salchow and Rittberger."
The Swedish newspaper "Dagens Nyheter" also criticized the event from start to finish, alleging that the organizers had stacked the panel against Salchow and that two judges had "an exchange about Rittberger... which is strictly prohibited." The circumstances surrounding Salchow's win in Berlin motivated him to reform the judging of figure skating in the decades that followed when he served as ISU President.
Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.
A woman celebrating a victory for the suffragettes - casting her vote in the first election where women could vote in New York City, 1918. Photo courtesy Library Of Congress.
Immersed in an age of figure skating competitions streamed live on the internet, YouTube videos, text messages, Twitter feeds and Facebook Live sessions, it is sometimes hard to imagine a time when audience members didn't have opportunities to instantly communicate their thoughts about a figure skating performance digitally. Sure, 'back in the day' you could boo the judges or even resort to pelting them with fruit - it's happened - but as a spectator prior to the age of social your voice as a spectator was in many ways more limited than it is today.
The first figure skating competition to allow audience members to cast votes took place at The Hippodrome in New York City after a matinee ice show on February 17, 1916. With more than two hundred and thirty votes more than the second place finisher Gerald Bowden, the winner was Arthur Held. New Haven's Walter W. Brewer finished third, followed by C.H.L. Veins and Adolf Windsperger. Votes were cast by ballot and the skaters were all professionals.
The idea of audience-judged skating competitions wouldn't be revived for over half a century. In the eighties, professional figure skating competitions like the World Professional Championships in Jaca, U.S. Open and the Pro-Skate tour of competitions began experimenting with including a 'public opinion' or 'audience' judge on their panels... either a local celebrity with no skating background offering a 'layman's' response to the performance they'd seen or a judge assigned to gauge the audience applause a skater received and mark accordingly. Like Krusty The Clown's Applause-O-Meter, these judging systems didn't always work out so well even though the concept was well-intentioned.
In the nineties following 'The Whack Heard Around The World', you sometimes couldn't turn on the television without having to decide which of two or three figure skating events broadcast simultaenously to watch and which to record for later. During this great boom of professional figure competitions, the producers of two events considered how directly involving audience members in the competitions they were watching would make them more invested.
The first televised figure skating competition to be judged solely by an in-house audience was the Trophée Lalique d'Or held in November of 1994 and 1995 at the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy Stadium in Paris, France. Sandra Garde and Anita Hartshorn and Frank Sweiding - skaters who'd never won medals at the World Championships or Winter Olympics - took home some serious prize money as winners. However, the concept of an audience-judged competition would take another year and a half to reach North American audiences.
Cord and Kirk Pereira of Diamond Sports & Entertainment, based in Boise, Idaho, pitched the idea of an entirely audience-judged figure skating competition to the good folks at CBS. The network executives ate it right up and on May 7, 1996, The Great Skate Debate was held at the Brown County Veteran's Arena in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Four thousand, two hundred and fifty three spectators attended the competition, where seven men and seven women performed one competitive program. Using computerized devices, the audience in Green Bay had forty five seconds after each performance to input scores from 9.0 to 10.0 for each skater.
Yuka Sato, Denise Biellmann and Katarina Witt claimed the top three spots in the women's event and Scott Hamilton, Kurt Browning and Paul Wylie were the top three in the men's. Kirk Pereira told "Amusement Business" magazine, "The idea is that all the skaters are world class and none of them are deserving of anything below a 9. The beauty of the concept is it becomes a personal decision. The true skating fan understands from a technical standpoint and sends a message of appreciation. But it also has a certain popularity component to it. That is the whole idea. Subjectivity has its place and application in any sport. This focuses on the audience and how they feel. That and the interactivity are the critical factors - bringing that subjectivity into the editorial content of the program itself." In the May 9, 1996 issue of the "Times Colonist", Bill Leighton remarked, "Katarina Witt, [Nancy] Kerrigan and [Yuka] Sato were among many of the skaters who signed autographs for fans on their way off the ice. Hamilton hammed it up during a showy Vegas number that included back flips, costume changes and a pair of pants that lit up. People waved signs proclaiming: 'We're Hot For Scott'. Young girls yelled out, 'We love you Joe' to the long-haired Jozef Sabovčík. But like any good debate, there was a difference of opinions. Occasionally, the crowd even booed its own judging."
Broadcast live on ZDF in December of 1996, Rowenta Masters auf dem Eis in Frankfurt, Germany utilized a judging system similar to The Great Skate Debate. Three men, women, pairs and dance teams performed one competitive program and received scores out of 10.0 from a panel of three judges, headed by European Champion Norbert Schramm. Following the judging panel's marks, voting was opened to the in-house audience.... a concept was familiar to viewers of ZDF's popular game show "Wetten, dass..?", where audience voting had been used since 1987. The audience marks were converted from percentages to points. If a skater received forty five percent of the audience vote, an additional 4.5 points was added to their score from the judging panel. As winners, Susanna Rahkamo and Petri Kokko, Elena Bechke and Denis Petrov, Denise Biellmann and Jozef Sabovčík split the lion's share of the eight hundred thousand mark prize money. In case you're wondering, that's over six hundred and thirteen thousand dollars in Canadian currency today... hardly chump change!
The Great Skate Debate returned as The Great Skate Debate II on March 27, 1998 on University of Illinois-Chicago Pavilion after partnering with TWI, the television 'arm' of IMG. This time, eight women and six men participated and the innovation of online voting was introduced for the first time in history. Five thousand in-house seats were still wired with handheld computers for voting on a scale of 8.0 to 10,0, but viewers at home could input scores in real time via an Excite search engine server.
Prior to the competition, in-house spectators were quizzed on their skating knowledge so that the commentators could break down the scoring of "novices, fans and die-hards". Kristi Yamaguchi, Ekaterina Gordeeva and Rory Flack Burghart claimed the top three spots in the women's event. Scott Hamilton repeated as the men's champion, again besting Paul Wylie and Kurt Browning. Sadly, by this point in history the popularity of professional figure skating competitions was already starting to wane. Despite receiving favourable reviews and boasting some great skating, The Great Skate Debate II earned lower Nielsen ratings than the same evening's broadcasts of "Kids Say The Darndest Things" and "Candid Camera".
In the years that have followed, USFSA pro-am competitions, the Improv Ice Show/Championships presented by Disson Skating, CBC's Battle Of The Blades, ITV's Dancing On Ice, NBC's Skating With Celebrities, ABC's Skating With The Stars, PSA's Virtual Skate Off and the Young Artists Showcase have all allowed audiences the chance to participate in the process of judging figure skating.
Most recently, the ISU Skating Awards were launched and a Russian skater named Anton Shulepov wearing a tacky and offensive Holocaust-themed outfit was nominated for Best Costume. When the ISU got called out for the nomination on social media, they responded with a tweet stating, "The ISU regrets that by error the wrong costume (Free Skating instead of Short Program costume) of Mr. Shulepov has been presented for voting. This error has been corrected and the ISU sincerely apologizes for this mistake and the bad sentiments it has caused." The tone-deaf PR fail made headlines in "Time" and "People" magazine and led many to question the nomination process. After all, Shulepov's short program costume at the NHK Trophy was a rather forgettable turtleneck and pants. Of the thousands of skating costumes worn so far this season, we were to believe the turtleneck was apparently haute couture.
What role audience judging will have in the figure skating's future remains to be seen... but I think we can all agree its history is certainly interesting.
Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.
When you dig through skating history, you never know what you will unearth. In the spirit of cataloguing fascinating tales from skating history, #Unearthed is a once a month 'special occasion' on Skate Guard where fascinating writings by others that are of interest to skating history buffs are excavated, dusted off and shared for your reading pleasure. From forgotten fiction to long lost interviews to tales that have never been shared publicly, each #Unearthed is a fascinating journey through time. This month's 'buried treasure' is an excerpt from an account of a holiday skating party at the turn of the twentieth century. It originally appeared in the December 1904 issue of "Country Life In America" magazine and was penned by New Jersey journalist Arthur Huntington Gleason.
EXCERPT FROM "A CHRISTMAS HOUSE-PARTY" (ARTHUR HUNTINGTON GLEASON)
Party-goer gathering greens for a Christmas 'maypole'
In the shadow of the trees, where the snow was firm and level, we set up ten pine cones, at a distance of fifty feet, and then with frozen snowballs, of a size that suited the maker, we bowled for score. The adjutant's companion, who had helped him to victory on the day before, took all honours with a pine-cone score of sixteen on five rounds. We ended the affair by a combination of cake-walk and promenade dance around the full circle of the clearing, and returned home our several ways, both parties arriving on the veranda within a few minutes of each other, at about four of the afternoon. "Ice carnival at eight to-night," said our host; "no one must miss it."
Promptly at eight we headed for the lake, where we were greeted by a scene that my room-mate described as "considerably thrilling." At the four corners of the lake, which approached the rectangular in shape, four headlights had been placed, which were blazing out across the ice. These headlights had the refracting power of engine lights, and were beyond the reach of wind. The bonfire was again blazing, but this time it served for warmth, and not for light. The east end of the lake was
plainly destined to see the center of the festivities, and here, at opposite corners, were stationed our faithful brass-band of the May-pole party, and a far-carrying hurdy-gurdy - one that clapped its hands on the high notes of Trovatore, and pounded brass with an automatic stick for the Intermezzo.
It had been brought for a price from the county seat, with its Italian operator, who was letting his instrument hibernate, while he sold Spanish chestnuts till tune-time came again. He and the band took turns on the music, and the antiphonal effect was excellent. Or, again, both played together.
Our young ladies, immediately on arrival, were supplied with hockey sticks, which they carried over the right shoulder, and at the crook of the hickory was swung a Japanese lantern with lit candle. It took quiet and clean-cut skating to keep the lanterns alight, and more than one went up in a blaze of glory before the steady, swinging skate-stroke was acquired. For the men who were trick skaters, and
wished to indulge in figure eights and reverse complications, Roman candles were provided. And the nine violet balls, climbing to the tree-tops, made a rich accompaniment for a skater, skating backward, in the famous triple curve. Along the lakeside, at 100-yard intervals, burned coloured
fire - red and green. White sweaters were the popular costume, but the adjutant appeared in full-dress uniform. Altogether, the colour scheme was unusual. From the center of the lake, Santa Claus sent up an endless chain of sky-rockets. The band began to freeze up, and were sent to the bonfire to take their turn on the hot coffee that was being served in birch-bark buckets. The Italian grinder also began to feel a-cold. He was supplanted by Rex F., who supplied the music for the remainder of the evening. Rex accompanied himself with a series of clog dances and jigs, which drew all the children from the fire and the fire-works.
He varied the tempo of his rendering each minute, so that "Mr. Dooley" came with an unexpected pathos, and "The Holy City" was disguised into rag-time. Then, as the lights burned low and the fireworks became charred ends and sticks, a Virginia reel on skates was selected to round off the evening. End to end bowed gravely, then circled back to back, and so through their evolutions, which
were more graceful than any hardwood floor ever saw, because performed in curves instead of steps. And the grand finale came when the adjutant and his lady shot down the line at an automobile clip, under twenty arches of Christmas greens, extending from partner to partner, while Rex ended his Strauss waltz in a burst of hurdy-gurdy speed and melody. Then, being not a little chilly, we all trooped in from the ice to a vigorous and ample open fire in the dining-room. We sat before it for an hour or so, then all other lights were put out and, as the fire died down, we crowned the evening
with a Ghost Party, wherein each member of the circle told a tale of true happening that contained a shudder.
Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.
"Miss Jenkins has a virility and a gay abandon which go well with her air of extreme youth, and achieved excellent work." - "The Montreal Gazette", February 26, 1921
The daughter of Frank Maurice Stinson 'F.M.S.' Jenkins and Margaret 'Annie' (Lampman) Jenkins, Dorothy Jenkins was born November 6, 1899 in Ottawa, Ontario. Her father was a post office clerk by day and a talented organist and conductor by night. Her mother was a concert pianist who taught at the Martin Krause School of Pianoforte Playing and Singing and the Canadian Conservatory of Music and founded and conducted Ottawa's Palestrina Choir. Her uncle was renowned Confederate poet Archibald Lampman, described as "the Canadian Keats" and her great grandfather was John Counter, who served as the mayor of Kingston, Ontario five times. Together, Dorothy's parents founded Ottawa's first full-size orchestra, the Ottawa Amateur Orchestral Society. To say she came from a family of high achievers would be an understatement.
Dorothy's famous uncle Archibald Lampman. Photo courtesy Library And Archives Canada.
Dorothy's family had a cottage in the Gatineau Hills in Quebec and were frequently visited by future Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. In an interview with Douglas Leiterman on the CBC program "Close-Up" in March of 1960, she recalled, "I must have been about three or four. He used to come over to a great deal, especially on Sunday evenings to sing hymns. I, at the time, got a little bored at seeing him every Sunday night so I remember one time I hid the hymn books... He said 'Oh, it doesn't matter. I know them all by heart anyway.' So we went out on the veranda and sang them all. I remember the night he was made Liberal leader... We were all sitting on the veranda which was in the front and he came through the back... and said... 'I have just made Liberal leader and I have no one to share it with.' It seemed rather sad."
For most of the year, Dorothy, her brother Frank and sisters Ruth and Marjorie grew up with their parents and a live-in servant named Edith at the family's home on Gainsborough Avenue, over an hour's walk from Dey's Skating Rink on Waller Street, where the Minto Skating Club held court. In the winters, her passion for skating was almost as consuming as her love of music... and Dorothy made the long trek across town to go carve out three's and eights amongst a who's who of Ottawa figure skating. She perhaps inherited her love of the ice from her hockey playing father, who was no slouch as a figure skater either. He was the founder and first captain of Ottawa Hockey Club of 1883 and a one-time President of the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada.
Under the direction of coaches Arthur Held and Henry Cartwright, Dorothy quickly proved to be one of the city's 'leading ladies' on the ice. In 1920, at the first Canadian Championships held after the Great War, she placed a close second to Jeanne Chevalier. In 1921, she finished second in both singles and pairs at the Canadian Championships, skating in the latter event with C.J. Allan. She claimed her first Canadian women's title in 1922, and returned the following year to defend it. At that 1923 event, she again placed second in the pairs event, this time with partner Andrew Gordon McLennan. The March 3, 1923 issue of the "Ottawa Evening Journal" recalled her win in the women's event thusly: "The youthful Minto Club skater gave a most finished performance... and fully deserved the honours... Miss Jenkins had to contend with some stout opposition, but she came through with flying colors. Though last to compete in the free skating event, Miss Jenkins seemed to combine all the best features of the individual programmes that had previously been skated... The crowd warmly applauded the winner." At the 1923 North American Championships, Dorothy won the pairs event with Andrew Gordon McLennan and finished third behind Americans Theresa Weld Blanchard and Beatrix Loughran in the women's event. That winter, she was also the winner of the Malynskih Cup, the Minto Skating Club's 'Ladies Prize For Skating'.
Dorothy Jenkins and Gordon McLennan. Photo courtesy Minto Skating Club Archives.
The following winter, Dorothy was given the opportunity to compete at the Winter Olympic Games in France. However, her father issued her an ultimatum. She could either skate in the Olympics in Chamonix or go to Paris to study contralto singing. Following in the footsteps of her musical parents, she chose singing over skating, and so Melville Rogers - her intended pairs partner - was left to team up with Toronto's Cecil Smith at the eleventh hour. Not long after her return from France, she married artist Harry Orr McCurry. Her bridesmaid was fellow Minto skater Dorothea Aylen. In her book "Minto Skating Through Time: History Of The Minto Skating Club 1904-2004", Janet B. Uren noted, "That was the end of skating for Mrs. McCurry. She hung away her skating costumes in the attic - her daughter, Margot, remembers one of them, a Scottish kilt with a big pin - and packed up the skates that the Duchess of Devonshire (wife of the Governor-General, 1916-21) had presented to her... In later years, Dorothy McCurry did not talk much about skating - except to say that she preferred the exuberant musicality of free skating to the strict discipline of figures. Still, there is no denying that the graceful Jenkins was also fiercely competitive. Once, she overheard two opponents discussing her, and one said, 'Don't worry about her: she's no good at figures.' Jenkins had been unwell during the previous year's competition, she told her daughter indignantly, and her school figures had suffered. As a rule, there was nothing wrong with them, and she had a glass-fronted cabinet in the dining room full of skating trophies and medals to prove it."
Program from one of Dorothy's recitals. Photos courtesy City Of Ottawa Archives.
In her post-skating days, Dorothy became an iconic figure in Ottawa's burgeoning music scene. A talented teacher, she established the Ottawa Junior Music Club in 1928 to give young music students the opportunity to gain performance experience. She became affiliated with the Morning Music Club of Ottawa, Pro Musica Society, Concert Society of Ottawa, Ottawa Music Festival and the National Festival of Music and the Arts.
Dorothy also served as the choir director of Studio Singers and gave recitals of her own for many years, singing while her mother accompanied her on the piano. Her husband Harry served as Assistant Director of National Gallery of Canada for twenty years before becoming Director from 1939 to 1955. Both Dorothy and Harry were devout followers of Christian Science. Surviving her husband by nine years, Dorothy passed away on August 29, 1973 in Ottawa, Ontario at the age of seventy three. Following her death, the Dorothy Lampman McCurry Scholarship was established and awarded at the Kiwanis Music Festival.
Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.
Born September 15, 1917 in Hokkaido, Japan, Ryusuke Arisaka moved three hours east to Sapporo when he was just an infant. He began skating at the age of four while attending elementary school and played hockey until he attended the private Hokkai Gakuen Sapporo High School. When he began studying Meiji University in Tokyo in 1935, he began focusing seriously on figure skating and won the Japanese junior men's title that same winter. Unfortunately, he broke his ankle not long after and finished only fourth in the senior men's event when he returned to competition in 1938. The following year, he moved up to second. Finally, in 1940 and 1941, he claimed his first two Japanese titles. Unfortunately, the cancellation of the Japanese and World Championships due to World War II put his skating career on hold for several years.
Access to Japan's ice rinks was quite limited during World War II, but Ryusuke's talent and determination led him back to the top of the pack in Japanese men's skating pack in 1947, 1948 and 1951. His prize for winning each of his Japanese titles was a silver trophy, a medal and a scroll. It was in the year that he won his fifth and final Japanese title that Ryusuke participated in first and only World Championships in Milan, Italy. Though he placed dead last, he was grateful for the experience. Along with Etsuko Inada, the darling of the 1936 Winter Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, he was of Japan's first skaters at the World Championships in fifteen years.
Photo courtesy Hachinoheshi Public Library
Ryusuke announced his decision to turn professional in 1953 and starred in one of his country's first ice shows alongside Toshikazu Katayama and Reiko Kato for a time, before taking a job coaching in Tokyo. His students included Japanese Champions Hideo Sugita and Miwa Fukuhara. When one of Ryusuke's competitors at the 1951 World Championships in Milan, Don Laws, was serving in the Korean War, he had a week off and travelled to Tokyo to check out Japan's biggest indoor rink with a group of Army buddies, two of them fellow skaters. They didn't know a word of Japanese, so they just kept saying 'Ryusuke Arisaka'. Laws later joked, "Perhaps my pronunciation was off, because at first one, then two, then five people gathered around me, trying to make out what I was saying. Suddenly, with a burst of inspiration and in chorus, they all said, 'Ryusuke Arisaka!' and someone ran to fetch him. He was there, in the back somewhere, and within minutes he was standing before me, bowing and welcoming us. Large bottles of beer were brought without question and thrust into our hands and we were invited to sit. It was all happening so fast, it was a bit overwhelming. Ryusuke Arisaka and we three American skaters sat along with other Japanese skaters at the rink and watched a hockey game. My friends in the meantime jostled me with deference and revelled in the fact that they were there with me... Soon plans were made exclusively for me to stay as a guest for as long as possible and conduct, with Japanese skaters, a skating seminar. It was what I wanted; I had a desire to become involved and help improve their skating program in any way possible."
Etsuko Inada and Ryusuke Arisaka. Photo courtesy "Fukui Shimbun".
Ryusuke coached in Tokyo for several years and penned a Japanese language instructional book on figure skating which proved a valuable tool for many of his country's skaters who were reliant on works by English or German authors, which often got 'lost in translation'. He also served on the board of the National Skating Union of Japan for many years. Sadly, he passed away on November 27, 1986 at the age of sixty nine, missing the opportunity to see Midori Ito make history as Japan's first World Champion by only three years.
Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.
Thirty thousand women had just joined hands and formed a human chain around a nine mile perimeter face at the RAF Greenham Common in a women's peace protest. Trenchcoats and knee-high boots with kitten heels were the latest fashion fads. "Raiders Of The Lost Ark", the first installment in the Indiana Jones series, was the highest grossing film at the box office and "Physical" by Olivia Newton-John topped the music charts.
The year was 1981 and from from December 15 to 20, one hundred and sixteen skaters from twenty two nations convened in Oberstdorf, West Germany for the 1982 World Junior Figure Skating Championships. Yes, you read that right... the 1982 World Junior Championships were actually held in 1981.
For some, the event was an early Christmas present, for others a cruel visit from Krampus. However the results of the event shaped their holidays, the training facilities were ideal. Three ice surfaces under one renovated roof and a restaurant with English speaking wait staff was an ideal home away from home for many of the North American participants.
The Canadian contingent had an amusing trip to West Germany, being mistakenly announced to fellow passengers on their flight by the pilot as the Canadian Ski Team. When they arrived, the weather was warm and rainy, but soon the sun broke through the clouds and the audiences started packing into the arenas in surprisingly high numbers for a junior competition. Today, we will take a look back on how it all played out!
THE PAIRS COMPETITION
Babette Preußler and Torsten Ohlow
Before the pairs event even started, it was evident to everyone that a team from the Soviet Union would end up on top in Oberstdorf. The question was which one! The short program was won by Inna Bekker and Sergei Likhansky, who were tailed by Marina Nikitiuk and Rashid Kadyrkaev and Marina Avstriyskaya and Jury Kvashnin. With a free skate packed full of challenging technical content, Avstriyskaya and Kvashnin moved up to take the gold. Bekker and Likhansky placed second and the East German pair of Babette Preußler and Torsten Ohlow placed third in free skate, stopping any hopes of a Soviet sweep of the podium dead in their tracks. Sixth in both rounds of the competition and overall were Vancouver siblings Linda and John Ivanich, particularly impressive since at the 1981 Canadian Championships in Halifax they had only been tenth in the junior pairs event. They were followed in seventh by another pair of siblings, Americans Natalie and Wayne Seybold. Interestingly, of the fifteen teams competing in Oberstdorf, seven of them were family affairs.
THE WOMEN'S COMPETITION
Janina Wirth
Twenty three women competed in the women's event. The school figures were won by West Germany's Cornelia Tesch, who was followed by Austria's Parthena Sarafidis, America's Kelly Webster and East Germany's Janina Wirth. When Wirth landed a solid double flip/triple toe-loop combination in her short program, she gave Tesch cause to worry. In the free skate, she overtook her for the gold. The previous year's silver medallist, Marina Serova of the Soviet Union, dropped to ninth place.
Seventh in the figures, Canada's Elizabeth Manley (the oldest skater in the women's event at sixteen) finished second in the short program with three clean jumping passes but an unlucky fall on a spin. She performed a confident, dynamic free skate with no major mistakes that included a clean triple toe-loop and triple Salchow to snatch the bronze from Americans Jill Frost and Kelly Webster. However, the real talk of Oberstdorf was Japan's Midori Ito. Everyone's eyes were on her in the practice sessions but despite winning both the short program and free skate, a nineteenth place finish in the school figures kept her down in sixth place overall. Even more impressive about Ito's performance was the fact that she landed a triple flip and triple toe-loop/triple toe-loop combination... at twelve years of age! Manley said of Ito, "All I can say is that she is an incredible free skater and she's one in a million. Not only was she enjoyable to watch, but she is fun to be with and talk to."
THE MEN'S COMPETITION
Scott Williams. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.
Twenty two men competed in Oberstdorf and American Scott Williams dominated from start to finish, winning the school figures, short program and free skate with ease ahead of his teammate Paul Guerrero of Skokie Valley, Illinois. It was his third time entering the event and his first time winning. East Germany's Alexander Koenig was third after figures, had a disastrous eleventh place short program and rebounded to take the bronze medal. Japan's Makoto Kano was fifth in the short program and third in the free skate, but an unlucky thirteenth place in the figures kept him behind the Soviet Union's Yuri Bureiko and American James Cygan. 1981 Canadian Novice Champion Lauren Patterson of Scarborough finished fifth in the figures and skated a clean short program. However, the fifteen year old dropped to ninth with a free skate that didn't have the technical content of his peers. Just behind him in tenth and eleventh were two brothers from the Soviet Union... Victor and Vladimir Petrenko.
THE ICE DANCE COMPETITION
Deanna Poirier and Brett Schrader. Photo courtesy Toronto Public Library, from Toronto Star Photographic Archive. Reproduced for educational purposes under license permission.
Seventeen teams were supposed to have competed in Oberstdorf but the Polish team of Beata Kawełczyk and Tomasz Politański withdrew when martial law was declared in their home country just one day before their departure. From the first compulsory to the free dance, the Soviet Union's Natalia Annenko and Vadim Karkatchev led the pack. Their winning free dance, of a Russian folk flavour, was well received by the West German audience. Lynn Copley-Graves, in her book "Figure Skating History: The Evolution Of Dance On Ice" wrote, "Typical of Soviet training, [Annenko and Karkatchev] spent less time warming up on the ice but exercised almost continuously off the ice. A team psychologist accompanied them to Oberstdorf, and a masseuse massaged their scalps before they competed." Their teammates Tatiana Gladkova and Igor Shpilband, students of Lyudmila Pakhomova in Moscow, finished second. Despite two slips in their free dance, Americans Lydia Malek and Alexander Millier III fended off a challenge from the French team of Sophie Mergiot and Philippe Berthe to take the bronze medal. Young Canadians Deanna Poirier and Brett Schrader and Christine Horton and Michael Farrington placed ninth and thirteenth. Barbara Graham, who acted as Team Leader for the CFSA, said, "This was a good learning experience for these young skaters who were competing against dancers well experienced in performing original set pattern and free dance programs."
Following the competition, all the competitors attended a banquet and were given gifts by the host federation. The skaters who placed in the top six were even given gold bars! In "The Globe And Mail", Barbara Graham waxed poetic about Elizabeth Manley, Canada's only medallist at the event: "She used to lack finesse in spins, and didn't have the detail and concern over femininity that really matters. But she's improved greatly in that matter and realizes that you can't be just a jumper.'' In her autobiography, Manley claimed she was admonished for not winning an event she could have "easily won" and told by Graham after the event, "It's not enough to have a high on one day and a low on the other."
Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.
Photo courtesy Archives de l’Ordre des architectes du Québec
The son of George and Dinah (Kinghorn) McDougall, (James) Cecil McDougall was born July 4, 1886 in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. He and his older brother George grew up in a home on Osborne Street in Montreal's St. Antoine Ward in a well-to-do Scotch Presbyterian household with two live-in servants. His father was a successful pulp and paper manufacturer.
Cecil graduated from Montreal High School in 1904 and later earned a dual degree from McGill University in architecture and engineering. He went on to establish his own agency of architects and engineers, specializing in hospital architecture. He was involved in the design of the Montreal General Hospital, Protestant Hospital For The Insane and Jewish General Hospital, among dozens of other projects. He served as a municipal alderman for seventeen years and was responsible for a complete overhaul of the Montreal Winter Club on Drummond Street in 1929... the rink that played host to a who's who of Canadian figure skating.
Aerial view of Montreal's Jewish General Hospital. Photo courtesy McGill University.
To say that Cecil's involvement in the skating world extended beyond his involvement in the re-design of the Montreal Winter Club is really a huge understatement. He was a Canadian Champion in fours skating with Jeanne Chevalier, Norman Mackie Scott and Winnifred Tait in 1920 and finished second in the men's event at the Canadian Championships in 1911. In 1913, the newly formed Figure Skating Department of the Amateur Skating Association Of Canada appointed him as one of the first nine accredited judges in Canada. Three years later, he was appointed a second-class test judge - the highest appointment available at the time. In 1917, he was responsible for the preparation of the Figure Skating Department's first technical handbook covering competitions, tests and school figures. When the Department began naming first-class test judges in 1922, he was named as one of them. He also served as the Department's auditor from 1913 to 1921, as well as chair of several committees including the Competitions Committee which oversaw the Canadian Championships. He worked closely with Louis Rubenstein, a fellow Montreal alderman who served as the Department's President.
Competitors and judges at the 1927 Canadian Championships. Back: Miss Morrissey, Dorothy Benson, Margot Barclay, John Machado, Elizabeth (Blair) Machado, Cecil MacDougall, Mr. Sharp, Norman Mackie Scott, Evelyn Darling, Constance Wilson, Jack Eastwood, Maude Smith, Bud Wilson. Front: Kathleen Lopdell, Paul Belcourt, Frances Claudet, Jack Hose, Henry Cartwright, Isobel Blyth, Melville Rogers, Marion McDougall, Chauncey Bangs. Photo courtesy "Skating Through The Years".
Perhaps most interesting of Cecil's contributions to figure skating was the fact that he was the first Canadian judge at the World Championships in 1930. Two years later in Lake Placid, he was Canada's first Olympic figure skating judge. Shortly after Louis Rubenstein's death in 1931, he was named President of the Figure Skating Department of the Amateur Skating Association of Canada. He held the position for three years and during his term Montreal played host to the World Figure Skating Championships, the first ISU Championship held in Canada.
Cecil passed away on April 20, 1959 in Montreal at the age of seventy two and was honoured by the city of Montreal for his contributions to local architecture with an Avenue in his name. He has yet to be inducted into Skate Canada's Hall Of Fame.
Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.
On December 12, 1868, the Empire City Skating Rink - the first covered ice rink in New York City - officially opened its doors, catering to the upper echelon of New York society wishing to escape the elements... and the 'riffraff' who deluded the city's most popular skating ponds. The rink - heralded as "a magnificent structure" by "The New York Times" - was a three hundred and fifty foot long by one hundred and seventy foot wide wooden building with a seventy foot high arched ceiling, brick flooring over which eight inches of ice was laid and a front resembling a Chinese pagoda. The Hervey Brothers and John C. Babcock, the men who had a hand in its construction and early management, thought of every convenience and detail. There were raised platforms for spectators, a gallery for a military band and a lavish refreshment room where suppers were occasionally held for the rink's upper crust patrons. Hundreds of gas lanterns illuminated the natural ice at night, allowing patrons to enjoy skating in the evening... a novelty that would have been near impossible outdoors on ponds because of the risk of collisions and the perils of falling through the ice. W.W. Wallace and Harry Taxter acted as the rink's proprietors and managers.
Top: Trade card courtesy Richard D. Sheaff. Used with permission. Bottom: Photo courtesy Major & Knapp Engraving, Manufacturing & Lithographic Co. / Museum of the City of New York. 29.100.1544. Used with permission.
Though members of the New York Skating Club still skated outdoors on Mitchell's Pond on Fifty Eighth Street near Fifth Avenue at the time the Empire Skating Rink opened, many defected and joined the hastily developed and short-lived Empire City Skating Club. One of the club's founders was James B. Story, who went on to win the Championships Of America in 1879 in Manhattan, judge various 'fancy' skating competitions and to act as one of the seven founders of the National Amateur Skating Association in 1886.
Engraving of James B. Story. Photo courtesy New York Public Library.
Beginning in 1869, the Empire City Skating Rink hosted an endless series of lavish ice carnivals and masquerades, among them the Fancy Dress and Civic Skating Carnival and the Grand Masquerade Carnival. Seaver of Union Square supplied the female skaters with their dresses and games of curling and lacrosse on ice were enjoyed. In 1870, the Brooklyn, New York and Empire City Skating Clubs worked in cooperation to "furnish champion skaters" for two hour matinee and evening exhibitions. The stars who performed included Eugene Beauharnais Cook, John Kelly - known as 'Smiling John E. Miller - and John Martin, who according to George Henry Browne "used to rise from an outside edge forward to a pirouette, making one complete revolution and then suddenly dropping his heel, shoot off deftly on the outside edge of the pirouetting foot."
Engravings of skating sessions at the Empire Rink show throngs of skaters - both men and women - circling the perimeter of the ice as better 'fancy' skaters performed figures in the middle of the rink. Christmas was even celebrated on the ice at the Empire Rink. Frank Swift (William H. Bishop) wrote of one such festive gathering in the "New York Clipper" of January 7, 1871 thusly: "The Empire Rink had a fine sheet of ice provided for Christmas, and consequently there was a steady stream of visitors from the overcrowded ponds of the Park to the Rink, where the sport could be engaged in with comfort. At night, when the Park skating ceased, the Rink was resorted to by many, and, with illuminations and music, an animated scene was presented."
Engraving by George Vallée
In the summer months and in fact, prior to the rink's official opening, the rink played host to a wide variety of special events. The New York Athletic Club held its first semi-annual Games there in 1868 and spectators flocked to the rink to enjoy various amusements, including concerts with full military bands, French velocipedes and distance walkers. A man named Edward Payson Weston, billed as 'The Great American Walker', entertained crowds in 1870 by endeavouring to walk "one hundred miles inside twenty-two consecutive hours, for a purse of fifteen hundred dollars."
In October 1869, the Empire Rink played host to the American Institute National Exhibition, which "The Nation" described as "the most comprehensive and important ever seen on this continent, consisting of machinery in motion, magnificent display of novel and ingenius inventions by American hands and brains, implements of husbandry, products of the soil, the workshop of the soil, fabrics of every description manufactured from cotton, flax and silk. Thousands of other attractive novelties." They even served soda water. Imagine!
Engraving of the Empire Roller Skating Rink
That same year, the American Institute leased the Empire City Skating Rink. Two years later, they purchased the venue. By 1875, the Empire Skating Rink Co. - the original owner - was listed on the Bureau Of Arrears list of defaulters. Conventions, dog shows and fairs drew patrons to the space until May 1877, when the rink briefly reopened as the Empire Roller Skating Rink. On January 7, 1878, the Empire Rink briefly reopened for ice skating and on February 4 and 5 of that year, the rink played host to the Amateur Championship of America in speed skating. Through the 1880's, the venue fell into disrepair and in 1893, it was demolished and replaced by a Flemish Revival exhibition hall.
By 1896, when the Ice Palace Skating Rink,at Lexington Avenue and One Hundred and Seventh Street and the St. Nicholas Rink on West Sixty Sixth Street near Columbus Ave opened, the Empire Rink was all but forgotten.
Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.
