The Gardens opened three years after a fire destroyed the city's prior sports arena, the Schenley Park Casino, in 1896.

Outside team sports, the Duquesne Garden Ball Room, located on the arena's second floor, was also one of the largest dance halls in the country during the time.

[3] The Duquesne Garden Ball Room, located on the second floor, has been used by some of the leading clubs and societies in the city for their annual dances.

[5] The building quickly became the site for all manner of gatherings: There were opera performances, boxing matches and political rallies.

According to Total Hockey, the official encyclopedia of the NHL, Pittsburgh was one of the first cities in North America to lure amateur Canadian players for what was a standard $30 a week stipend and a local job in the early 1900s.

[10] That same year at the Garden, Roy Schooley, the arena's manager, put together an 11-player squad that won silver at the Antwerp Games, in the sport's Olympic debut.

[10][11] The Garden also hosted several contests, which were played on Mondays and Tuesdays, to help raise money in order to cover the expenses associated with sending the U.S. Olympic Hockey team to the games held in Antwerp, Belgium.

[12] In 1925, the expansion Pittsburgh Pirates team of the NHL was assembled by signing players from the Yellow Jackets to professional contracts.

Pittsburgh's first-ever NHL game was played on December 2, 1925, with the Pirates taking on the New York Americans in front of 8,200 fans.

The team was so strapped for money that they traded former captain Lionel Conacher to the New York Americans during the 1926–27 season for a journeyman player and $2,000.

In 1930, Roy Schooley founded a new Yellow Jackets team, which played for two years in the International Hockey League (IHL).

Pittsburgh theatre chain owner John H. Harris secured a lease on the Garden in 1932[13] and by 1935 established a third Yellow Jackets incarnation which he entered in the Eastern Amateur Hockey League.

In the 1935–36 season, the Yellow Jackets shared the Garden's ice time with the short-lived Pittsburgh Shamrocks of the IHL.

First, on March 31, 1936, he hired Sonja Henie, a 24-year-old Norwegian figure skater, to perform before a Yellow Jackets' home game.

[16] Harris found it difficult to draw a large crowd to hockey games during the Great Depression, so he hired Henie to entertain the audience between periods.

The performances were a rousing success, and Harris soon set out to create an ice show to rival the song and dance spectaculars that were popular on Broadway.

On January 15, 1937, the Garden hosted a championship tennis match between world champions Ellsworth Vines and Fred Perry.

On July 4, 1929, Jelly Roll Morton and his jazz band, the Red Hot Peppers, played the Garden.

[23] However, while celebrating its 40th anniversary, the Garden still boasted as having one of the highest-regarded ice surfaces in North America, still drawing hockey players from Canada.

Jim Kubus, the editor of pittsburghhockey.net, a local history site, and his brother removed the bricks before the wall could be destroyed and stored them for the next two years.

[11] Billy Conn, the famed Pittsburgh boxer who nearly won a match against Joe Louis, fought at the Gardens.

"[6] Demolition of The Gardens brought a temporary end to professional ice hockey in Pittsburgh, as there was no other suitable arena to replace it.