Houston Field House is a multi-purpose arena located on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York. Opened in 1949 as the RPI Field House, it is the nation's second-oldest college hockey rink still in use, behind Princeton University's Hobey Baker Memorial Rink. The arena was renamed in honor of former RPI president Livingston W. Houston in 1978. Until the opening of Knickerbocker Arena in Albany in 1990, it was the largest arena in the Capital Region.
Origins Popular legend holds that Houston Field House was previously an airplane or dirigible hangar for the United States armed forces during World War II. In reality, it originated as a warehouse located at the Davisville Naval Construction Battalion Center in Rhode Island. Following the war, the federal government established the Veterans Education Facilities Program (VEFP) to help colleges build facilities to handle the increased enrollment of veterans returning from the war. One aspect of the VEFP was to offer buildings designated as "war surplus" to colleges and academic institutions who applied for them.
Originally, the RPI Board of Trustees, led by then-RPI President Dr. Livingston W. Houston, sought a hangar from the VEFP in order to establish a "sports-civic arena" for the RPI campus and the city of Troy. Unfortunately, hangars were not considered "war surplus." An investigation sponsored by the Board of Trustees discovered the warehouse facility in Rhode Island and applied under the VEFP to bring it to campus, despite the fact that its original design was not satisfactory for the creation of an arena. RPI's application was approved by the Federal Works Agency in February 1947.
The VEFP underwrote both the cost of transporting the warehouse from Davisville to Troy and the cost to reassemble it upon its arrival. RPI, however, spent nearly $500,000 on its own to redesign the warehouse to its own specifications, including the re-fabrication of initial materials and the purchase of new materials. Construction was originally planned to be completed by June 1948; however, inclement weather throughout the project pushed completion back 16 months to October 1949.
Early history On October 13, 1949, Livingston W. Houston officially opened the building as the RPI Field House as part of a ceremony honoring the Institute's 125th anniversary. The following evening, Canadian Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent was the principal speaker at the convocation and was presented with an honorary degree by Houston; the event marked St. Laurent's first major speech in the United States. A month later, on November 12, 1949, the RPI Field House hosted its first event, an Interfraternity Ball, with music performed by Elliot Lawrence and his 16-piece orchestra. On December 3, 1949, the first sporting event in the Field House's history took place as RPI defeated the New York State Maritime Academy, 55–43, in basketball.
A large impetus for the construction of the Field House was to create a home for the school's ice hockey team, which had played its first games in 1901 at Van Schaick Pond in nearby Cohoes, New York, and later played in various other locations in Cohoes and Albany, New York. From 1912 to 1938 (with the exception of 1937), the team played on an outdoor rink built every winter on campus along Sage Avenue, at the current location of Anderson Field. After the 1938 season, the team went into hiatus. Houston, an RPI alumnus who played hockey for RPI during his school years, originally sought to build the Field House as a means of returning hockey to campus. On January 10, 1950, the "Engineers" under head coach Ned Harkness played their first game at home since 1938, dropping an 8–2 contest to Middlebury. However, and possibly thanks to the construction of the Field House, Harkness would lead the Engineers to an NCAA championship only four years later in 1954.
Two weeks after the first hockey game, the RPI Field House hosted its first commencement ceremony, on January 27, 1950. General Omar Bradley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave the first commencement address.
In January 1950, H. L. (Jack) Garren began working as the new manager of the RPI Field House. Garren came to Troy from Lake Placid, New York, where he had supervised the construction of all facilities for the 1932 Winter Olympics, and continued to manage the venues—including the Olympic Arena—until he left his position in December 1949. Garren's objective was to promote local interest in hockey and figure skating at the RPI Field House; he soon began a offering a program of public skating sessions at the new venue and organized the RPI Figure Skating Club. By mid-January, Thomas F. Lockhart, the business manager for the New York Rangers and president of the Eastern Amateur Hockey League (EAHL), visited Garren and expressed an interest in the possibility of playing New York Rovers games in Troy. Two months later, the Rovers switched three of their home games from Madison Square Garden in New York City to the RPI Field House as an experiment to gauge interest. The Rovers went on to schedule nine of their regular season home contests at the RPI Field House during both the 1950–1951 and 1951–1952 seasons. Although the Rovers were disbanded in August 1952, the team's success in Troy led to the city being granted an expansion franchise in the EAHL that same month. The RPI Field House was the home of the Troy Uncle Sam's Trojans during the 1952–1953 season, but the EAHL did not operate the following season due to a lack of teams.
On December 27, 1951, the Field House hosted the first annual RPI Invitational Tournament. The first tournament featured 8 schools playing 12 games over three days, and was won by Brown University. The following year, the tournament was cut to 4 teams playing a round-robin schedule over 3 days, which remained the tournament's format until 1982, when it gained a 2nd-day consolation game/championship game format. The RPI Invitational was the nation's oldest in-season invitational tournament in college hockey until its final iteration in 2010.
Throughout the 1950s, several RPI sporting events were held at the RPI Field House, including basketball, tennis, wrestling, and pistol and rifle shooting.
In March 1959, the RPI Field House hosted the 1959 NCAA men's ice hockey tournament (known today as the Frozen Four). North Dakota won its first of several NCAA championships, defeating Michigan State in overtime of the championship game. Three of the tournament's four games went into overtime, which also included semifinal and consolation games with Boston College and St. Lawrence. The tournament took place over a three-day period and drew over 17,000 attendees.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the RPI Field House was often referred to as "The Madison Square Garden of Upstate New York". In its first two decades, it played host to more than 300 theatrical and musical events, countless hockey games, and several commencement ceremonies.
Hockey line As the popularity of hockey grew, tickets became hot items among students. Owing to its origins as a military warehouse, most views were obstructed at least some angle between the rink and the seats due to large support columns that held up the Field House's roof. This led to the birth of what is known simply as "hockey line." Groups of people – usually members of various fraternities and sororities – take a place outside of the RPI Student Union building. Traditionally, the line began sometime during late July or early August prior to the beginning of Fall classes and continued until tickets went on sale in mid-September. People in line are allowed to buy up to eight tickets and can have people hold their place in line while they eat or go to class. Students set up beds, couches, television sets, and, more recently, computers and video games to pass the time as someone occupies each place in line on a 24-hour basis.
Following the Engineers' 1985 national championship victory, the Epsilon Iota chapter of the Psi Upsilon fraternity set a hockey line record by beginning the line on the very next day – March 31, 1985 – and continuing the line through the summer until tickets went on sale on September 25, 1985 — besting the previous record of 33 days with 178 days.
Renovation and rejuvenation In 1978, a new tradition started that continues today – the annual Big Red Freakout! event. This event fills the Field House with thousands of screaming fans, and there is a giveaway each year.
At the 1978 Commencement ceremonies, it was announced that the RPI Field House would be renamed Houston Field House in honor of former president Livingston W. Houston, who had died the previous winter. Houston had been RPI's 11th president from 1943 to 1958, and was president when the Field House was built.
1983 brought several changes to the Field House. The Institute spent $2.5 million to renovate the building during the summer, including a support renovation which allowed the removal of all but four of the columns. Some think the view obstruction caused by the original columns gave rise to "hockey line" and that column removal led to the demise of "hockey line", but popularity of hockey was at least as large a factor. Indeed, "hockey line" reached its peak several years after the 1983 renovations. New scoreboards were installed, and the ice surface was lengthened to a full NHL size. In 1984, the NCAA tournament returned to Houston Field House for the first time since 1959 as the Engineers took on North Dakota. The Fighting Sioux, coming in as heavy underdogs, upset the homestanding Engineers on consecutive nights, ending the Engineers national title hopes. The next season, the Field House would host its final two NCAA tournament games as RPI dispatched Lake Superior State on their way to their second NCAA championship. Today's NCAA tournament games all take place at neutral ice sites with a minimum capacity higher than that of the Field House.
During the mid-1980s, Houston Field House was part of a vibrant boxing scene in the Capital District. Mike Tyson fought twice at the venue in 1986, including his first nationally televised bout against Jesse Ferguson, but Tyson's rise to the heavyweight championship at the end of the year helped lead to a decline, and boxing has not been featured at Houston Field House in recent years.
The Troy Slapshots of the Atlantic Coast Hockey League began using the Houston Field House as their home arena in October 1986. Established in 1985 as the New York Slapshots, the team was supposed to play in a new arena on Staten Island, but the venue ended up never being built so the Slapshots competed as a traveling team during their first season. After relocating to Troy, the Slapshots only ended up playing six games before the team folded.
The 1987 Big Red Freakout! event featured plastic horns as the giveaway. These horns made Houston Field House reverberate with noise – so much noise, in fact, that the evening's opponent, Brown, filed a complaint with the NCAA. In turn, this led to the creation of what is today known as "the RPI rule" nationwide, which prohibits fans from bringing artificial noisemakers into NCAA events.