Ice Palace

The Ice Palace opened with Monroeville Mall on May 13, 1969, as one of the shopping center’s most distinctive original attractions. Located at the center of the mall’s lower level, the rink helped distinguish Monroeville from conventional shopping centers by combining retail, dining, recreation and entertainment beneath one roof. Opening publicity called it “a new rink-le in shopping” and promoted the ice surface as larger than the famous rink at Rockefeller Center. Later recollections describe a 200-by-90-foot skating surface—slightly wider than a standard National Hockey League rink—surrounded by glass and maintained by an advanced refrigeration and climate-control system that kept the viewing area comfortably warm.

The Ice Palace functioned as much more than decorative scenery. It offered public skating, figure-skating instruction, private and group lessons, exhibitions, seasonal programs and, as hockey became more popular in western Pennsylvania during the 1970s, youth and scholastic hockey activity. Longtime manager Bob Mock recalled that the rink could be active for 18 to 20 hours a day during its busiest years. Local historian Zandy Dudiak estimated that approximately 5,000 people visited the rink each week at its peak. The rink became a social center where children learned to skate, teenagers gathered, couples met and families returned for annual events such as its Christmas ice show.

The rink was visually integrated into the surrounding mall. Restaurants including Schrafft’s and its successor, Di Pomodoro, offered dining rooms overlooking the ice, allowing patrons to watch skaters while eating. Pup-A-Go-Go operated near the rink entrance, and stores and restaurants benefited from the steady exchange between skating customers and mall shoppers. The Ice Palace thus embodied the original concept of Monroeville Mall as an enclosed suburban town center rather than simply a collection of stores.

The Ice Palace also became part of the mall’s film history. George A. Romero’s production of Dawn of the Dead used Monroeville Mall as its primary location during overnight filming beginning in November 1977, and the rink appears in the film’s mall sequences. The same rink later served as the location for Jeanie Szabo’s skating competition and fall in the 1983 film Flashdance. These appearances preserved the Ice Palace on film shortly before it disappeared.

After nearly fifteen years of operation, the Ice Palace closed in March 1984. Former rink personnel remembered public opposition to the decision, including senior skaters circling the ice with protest signs. The closing reflected changing mall-development trends, particularly the growing popularity of centralized food courts, rather than evidence that the rink had simply ceased attracting public affection. Its space was subsequently reconstructed as the Treats Food Court, a 15-unit dining complex reported to have been dedicated on November 17, 1984. Although the ice and rink equipment disappeared, the food court retained the Ice Palace’s central lower-level location and portions of the original architectural footprint.

The Monroeville Mall Ice Palace was not a branch of a known national skating-rink chain. It was a single-location recreational facility developed as an integral part of Monroeville Mall by Don-Mark Realty, the company that later became Oxford Development. The rink opened with the mall on May 13, 1969, during an era when enclosed shopping centers were increasingly being designed as complete leisure destinations. Rather than expecting customers merely to shop and leave, Monroeville Mall combined stores with restaurants, landscaping, fountains, public gathering areas and a full-sized indoor skating rink intended to keep visitors in the complex for hours.

According to longtime manager Bob Mock, the rink’s planners consulted George Lipchick, an Ice Capades-trained skater who had also studied drafting and subsequently became one of the facility’s managers. The resulting rink measured approximately 200 feet long by 90 feet wide. Its refrigeration and ventilation systems maintained high-quality ice while keeping the surrounding air between approximately 65 and 70 degrees, allowing spectators and mall patrons to watch comfortably without the severe cold commonly associated with traditional arenas. Mock, who began working at the rink at age eighteen, served there from its opening until shortly after its closing and later described it as one of the finest skating facilities in the United States.

Its design reinforced the “palace” identity. The ice was enclosed behind large expanses of glass, while bright white surfaces, columns and carefully maintained public areas gave the rink a polished, theatrical appearance. Colorful orange and blue circles were originally painted into the ice and continued visually onto portions of the surrounding walls. The design made skating part of the mall’s scenery: shoppers could pause at the glass, spectators could watch from adjoining areas and diners in nearby restaurants could look directly onto the ice.

The Ice Palace initially emphasized public skating and figure skating. It provided rental skates, lessons and opportunities for beginners as well as advanced skaters. As ice hockey grew in popularity throughout western Pennsylvania during the 1970s, the rink expanded its schedule to accommodate hockey practices and programs. The facility became connected with local scholastic and youth hockey while remaining open for public sessions and figure-skating instruction. Regional rink histories identify the Ice Palace as an important addition to the Pittsburgh-area skating landscape when it opened in 1969.

The facility hosted competitive skaters, ice-show performers, professional athletes and visiting celebrities. Former management recalled appearances by Olympic-level skaters and Pittsburgh Penguins players, along with public events involving figures from Pittsburgh sports and entertainment. Scott Hamilton was among the notable skaters remembered as having appeared there. Visitors associated with the nearby Holiday House entertainment venue also occasionally came to skate, helping give the Ice Palace a reputation as a place where an ordinary public session might unexpectedly include a nationally known performer or athlete.

Its importance, however, was primarily local. Thousands of residents learned to skate at the Ice Palace, participated in hockey programs, attended exhibitions or watched from the surrounding mall. Senior skaters who had once used the former Duquesne Gardens rink gathered for sessions accompanied by organ music. Children attended skating lessons and holiday programs, while families combined a skating trip with shopping and dinner. At its height, the rink reportedly attracted approximately 5,000 visitors each week and could operate as long as 18 to 20 hours in a single day.

The Ice Palace became internationally recognizable through film. During the production of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, the film crew worked inside Monroeville Mall after normal business hours, and the rink appears in scenes involving zombies, hockey equipment and the mall’s recreational spaces. Principal photography began in November 1977, with Monroeville Mall serving as the production’s main location. Several years later, the rink was used for the skating competition sequence in Flashdance, in which Jeanie Szabo, portrayed by Sunny Johnson, falls during her routine. Carnegie Mellon University Libraries specifically identifies the Flashdance rink as the same Monroeville Mall facility used in Dawn of the Dead.

The Ice Palace closed in March 1984. Bob Mock attributed the decision to several overlapping factors: changes within the mall’s ownership structure, the regional economic effects of the declining steel industry and an industrywide preference for food courts as the new centerpiece of enclosed malls. Skaters protested the closing, and Mock even wrote to President Ronald Reagan in an unsuccessful attempt to draw attention to the rink’s fate. Historic Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Amateur Hockey League both document that the rink was removed in 1984 and replaced by a food court.

The replacement was known as the Treats Food Court. A secondary architectural and mall-history chronology dates its dedication to November 17, 1984, and describes it as a 15-bay dining complex. The conversion reflected a broader transformation taking place in American malls during the 1980s: distinctive recreational and architectural attractions were increasingly replaced by standardized dining and retail space. In Monroeville, this change removed one of the features that had most clearly expressed the mall’s original identity as an indoor civic and recreational center.

Although the Ice Palace survived for less than fifteen years, its historical influence exceeds its relatively brief operation. It contributed to the development of local skating and hockey, created generations of personal memories and appeared in two films permanently associated with Pittsburgh’s cultural history. The former rink area remained recognizable within the later food court: the general footprint, surrounding white finishes and former service areas continued to reveal traces of the skating facility that once occupied the center of the mall. Archival photographs, film footage and recollections from former employees and skaters now preserve an attraction that many residents still regard as one of Monroeville Mall’s defining features.