As New York prepares for Thanksgiving, perhaps one of the most sought-after activities for the weekend will be ice skating. Ice skating has since become a quintessential New York City tradition, rooted in over 200 years of rich and cool history.
If you choose to glide through the season on ice, taking a spin anywhere from Central Park to Coney Island, you’re sliding into a New York winter tradition that includes the nation’s first organized ice rink, a decade of “Icetravaganzas” that drew millions, a glittery trend of hotel ice gardens throughout Midtown, and even a relationship to the origins of baseball.
NYC Parks has put together a collection of vintage photos on The History of Ice Skating in New York City. While we haven’t had much snow yet this year, New York is already a winter wonderland thanks to the many ice skating rinks found across the city.
Dutch and English New Yorkers glided on the frozen ponds and streams of Lower Manhattan in the 17th and 18th centuries, but the history of organized ice skating in New York City (and the nation) begins in Central Park in 1858.
That year, before the Park was entirely finished, The Lake welcomed skaters. In Olmstead and Vaux’s Greensward Plan for Central Park, the Lake was known as “the Skating Pond,” suggesting that the duo emphasized ice skating as a crucial component of the park’s design.
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The first part of Central Park that opened to the public was ice skating on the lake. Ice skating had become very popular in the 1850s-1860s. Back then, they lowered the water level so it would freeze. The Ice Skating Club of New York was founded in 1863 and was the second club to be founded in the US.
The Central Park Skating Pond inspired many other ponds throughout the five boroughs, like Mitchell’s Pond, just off Fifth Avenue at 58th Street, where the Plaza now stands. Mitchell’s Pond drew skaters as swank as the Plaza draws guests today.
But in most other circumstances, the ponds were for the people, and ice skating was considered one of the city’s most egalitarian forms of entertainment.
Since Civil War-era skating was a sport for the everyman, the city’s rinks drew giant crowds and were exceptionally large.
Mitchell’s Pond at 58th Street and Fifth Avenue, which was also quite popular at the time, became part of the New York Skating Club that year. Although the club was members-only, ice skating across the city was accessible to all people from all backgrounds and economic statuses. The Empire City Skating Rink at 63rd Street and Third Avenue had more than 3,000 people on its first day in 1868.
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Ice skating was not just limited to Manhattan; popular sites in Brooklyn included McCarren Park, Prospect Park, Sunset Park, and Commodore Barry Park.
There was a tradition of “raising the red ball” on Brooklyn streetcars as a way of indicating skating conditions at Prospect Park.
Union Pond in Williamsburg was another notable spot, opening in 1861. Union Pond, which was cleaned by several horses, featured live music and advanced lighting systems, as well as nearby pagodas.
To add to the sensation, the grounds included a pagoda, and the pond was cleaned by horsepower, courtesy of several horses who lived in a stable on-site. During the spring and summer months, Union Pond transformed into Union Grounds, the nation’s first enclosed baseball field, and charged spectators a 10-cent fee to watch.
Staten Island may have had its own rink at Willowbrook Park as well.
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Clearly, more people wanted to skate than Manhattan facilities could handle, so mid-19th century New Yorkers regularly made the trip by ferry to the completely separate city of Brooklyn to partake of its renowned skating ponds (That is, of course, if the East River itself didn’t freeze.
And there were so many places in Brooklyn to skate. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. If those lights weren’t enough, there were also “frequent displays of pyrotechnics throughout the season.”
Indoor Rinks and the Rise of Ice Shows
By the 1890s, technological advances brought rinks indoors and made skating more of a spectacle than ever before.
Frances Rosenfeld, a curator at the Museum of the City of New York, organized the museum’s exhibition New York on Ice: Skating in the City, which estimated that there were about 116 rinks in New York - at least, that’s how many Rosenfeld came across. This included indoor rinks, which became feasible in the 1890s, as well as many luxury “ice gardens” and rinks on rooftops and inside theaters and nightclubs.
The early 20th century brought skating to the level of theater, as ice shows brought skating to the stage. In fact, skating gave “The Great White Way” a whole new meaning, when ice shows appeared on Broadway.
As a result of technological developments, hockey became a popular sport in New York, leading to the creation of some informal teams around the turn of the century.
In 1915, international ice show darling Charlotte Oelschlagel arrived in New York City from Germany. The 17-year-old ice queen had been performing on ice for audiences since she was 10. She was so famous, she was known simply as Charlotte. When her ice revue Hip Hip Horray!
In the early 1900s, many venues hosted ice shows, which were further popularized by the arrival of Charlotte OelSchlägel to New York from Berlin.
OelSchlägel, an ice skating celebrity who performed in shows since she was 10, made frequent appearances at the Hippodrome Theater on 43rd Street and Sixth Avenue, combining music with dance over 400 times in 300 days.
The History of Ice Skating in Central Park (Audio-Described)
The Depression Era and the Rise of Rockefeller Center
In the 1930s and 40s, just about any lot in New York could be a rink. The Parks Department flooded tennis courts, baseball fields, and other park grounds to create temporary rinks across New York City so that skaters could slide across
But a proliferation of flooded ball fields didn’t mean that the Depression dispensed with opulence on ice. In fact, Christmas Day 1936 saw the opening of the Rink at Rockefeller Center.
By 1940, the Center Theater at Rockefeller Center debuted an “Icetraveganza” called It Happens on Ice including song, dance, and comedy performed on ice.
“I loved ice skating at Rockefeller Center,” Roth-Moise told Untapped New York. “As a child, I skated with many famous people, I got to skate in a few of the tree lightings, and had my photo taken on the first day of the skating season at the rink for the local papers. I remember Rockefeller Center used to have a huge Halloween party. My parents took me to a costume rental store, and my photo, as well as my parents’, appeared in the papers. We as a family always had a couple of lockers at the rink, and then as an adult, I always had a season pass.”
The Manhattan photographer, who has skated at Rockefeller Center every year since 1959, continued, “As a child, I ice skated at Rockefeller Center and Iceland, which was where the NYSC was housed. Iceland was adjacent to MSG on West 50th street. I can still remember all the ice shows I would see at MSG. Many of the rinks that were around in the city were gone by the 1960s. If you were a competitive skater after MSG was torn down, you skated at Skyrink, which was located in an office building located at 450 West 33rd Street on the 16th floor. When that rink was going to close, Chelsea Piers was created and the skating club moved there where it still is today.”
The Icestravaganza may have seen its final curtain, but that didn’t mean interest in skating was on the wane. In fact, 1950 was a banner year for New York skating.
Around the time the Queens rink opened, the Parks Department converted flooded baseball fields and tennis courts into temporary ice rinks.
The first facility formally devoted to ice skating was the New York City Building at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, which was constructed for the 1939-40 World’s Fair. The rink hosted ice shows during the World’s Fair, but it was later converted to an ice and roller skating rink that closed in 1946. The New York City building was temporarily used as a site for the U.N. General Assembly, and after the U.N. found its permanent home, the building returned to being an ice and roller skating rink in 1952. “Ice-Travaganza” performances at the rink, organized by Dick Button, were popular at the 1964-65 World’s Fair.
Wollman Rink and Beyond
Wolman Rink was financed by philanthropist Kate Wollman, who lived at the Waldorf Astoria. In the 1960s, Wollman also funded Central Park’s Lasker Rink and the skating rink in Prospect Park.
In 1949, philanthropist Kate Wollman funded an “artificial rink” to be built in Central Park. Wollman gave $600,000 toward the construction of Wollman Rink to honor her parents and brothers. About a century after the development of the Lake, Wollman Rink opened in 1950, with plenty of opportunities for safe skating regardless of the weather. Over 300,000 skaters glided across the ice in its first year of operation. Wollman also funded Central Park’s Lasker Rink in the north and Prospect Park’s rink.
“Figure Skating in Harlem used to have a gala at Wollman Rink that was called skating with the stars,” said Roth-Moise. “You were literally skating with a list of who’s who in skating, that was always a fun event. Nothing like skating with Dorothy Hamil or Scott Hamilton to name a few. The Today Show when ice skating was very hot would have a host of Olympic skaters perform, and I was fortunate enough to be down on the ice or next to the ice to watch them skate. I got to hold Meryl Davis’s Olympic gold medal as well Adam Rippon’s bronze medal as well as photograph all of the skaters over the years.”
Both of Roth-Moise’s daughters learned to skate at a 40×60 rink located on the second floor on 74th Street and Lexington Avenue called the Ice Studio. She also reflected how the World Trade Center had a rink for a few years that closed due to safety conditions. Some of her favorites at Brookfield Place and South Street Seaport recently opened.
By the end of that decade, the Sky Rink was open a Chelsea Piers.
New rinks are still springing up across the city. The Rink at Bryant Park opened in 2005. The World Ice Arena, an NHL-standard rink at Flushing Meadows, slid on the scene in 2009.
Reflecting on her time at the rink at Rockefeller Center, Roth-Moise said, “Growing up at the rink, everyone knew me. My parents were able to leave me there for hours and not worry. Back then you could walk through the restaurant in your skate guards to the coffee shop - no more. It was until recently a place where everyone knew you, we were the regulars. Through my adult years of ice skating at the rink, I was able to befriend many, many well-known figure skaters. I would photograph Olympic Pair skater JoJo Starbuck’s early morning workout class she would offer two mornings a week at 7:30 am. She would bring guest coaches whose names and faces you would know. The ice skating world is a small close-knit family and I am proud to have many as friends.”
According to Untapped New York Insider and ice skating connoisseur Robyn Roth-Moise, “Ice skating, like many sports, goes in and out of style.
Lucie Levine is the founder of Archive on Parade, a local tour and event company that aims to take New York’s fascinating history out of the archives and into the streets. She’s a Native New Yorker, and licensed New York City tour guide, with a passion for the city’s social, political and cultural history. She has collaborated with local partners including the New York Public Library, The 92nd Street Y, The Brooklyn Brainery, The Society for the Advancement of Social Studies and Nerd Nite to offer exciting tours, lectures and community events all over town.