Maple Leaf Gardens History
Maple Leaf Gardens, also an architectural marvel of it's time, was built during the
depression where investment funds were scarce and financiers skeptical.
Incredibly, the Gardens was built in five and a half months, less than a quarter of
the time it took to build the Skydome.
Smythe and his assistant Fank Selke used their negotiating skills to convince
members of the business communtiy, such as Eaton's and Sun Life Assurance, to
invest. Eaton's eventually agreed to sell the plot of land on which the Gardens
now stands to Smythe's group for $350,000. Construction costs were minimized
as a result of agreements made with labour unions to provide the workers with
Gardens' stock in place of 20% of their regular earnings. Materials cost twenty to
thirty percent less than the predepression period due to extremely low demand.
In the spring of 1931, demolition began at the corner of Church and Carlton
Streets, and construction began in late May. Designed by architects Ross and
MacDonald and built by the Thomson Brothers Construction.Co, over 1,200
labourers were employed on the project which used over 750,000 bricks, 77,500
bags of cement and 70 tons of sand. The 350' by 282' (106m by 86m) building
extends 13 stories (40m) above street level and contains 13,000,000 cubic feet
(370,000 cubic metres)
Opening night. November 12th, 1931, saw the Maple Leafs lose 2-1 to the
Chicago BlackHawks. The capacity crowd of 13,233 was amazed with the new
facility and seat prices ranged from 95 cents to $2.75.
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