Houston Field House is a multi-purpose arena located on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York. It is the nation's third-oldest college hockey rink, behind Northeastern University's Matthews Arena and Princeton University's Hobey Baker Memorial Rink. Further, it is the second-oldest arena in the ECAC Hockey League, behind Princeton's rink. Until the opening of the Times Union Center 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 for the United States Navy in Davisville, 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.
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. On October 13, Houston officially opened the building as the RPI Field House as part of a ceremony honoring the Institute's 125th anniversary.
Early history
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 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.
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.