Built without sports in mind but for use by the Pittsburgh Civic Light Orchestra, the Civic Arena also called ?The Igloo?, formerly known as the Civic Auditorium and Mellon Arena, was the world?s first indoor sports stadium with a retractable roof and the long home of Pittsburgh Penguins, the city's National Hockey League (NHL) franchise.

The Civic Arena was built primarily of about 2,950 tons of stainless steel with a 415 feet in diameter roof supported by a 260-foot arch and divided into eight sections, six of which are able to rotate in just two minutes but in 1995, a heavy scorecard was added making it impossible to completely open the roof at present. Although considered ahead of its time during its construction, the arena originally consisted only of lower bowl seating that can accommodate 10,000 people. Over the years the seating capacity has been increased by adding upper decks to hold an audience of about 17,500 for ice hockey games and to 18,500 for concerts.

The arena?s very first event was the Ice Capades, an ice skating theatrical show, held on September 19, 1961. Since then, a number of sporting events have taken place in the arena including boxing matches by Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson, roller hockey, roller derby, round ball classic (held annually between 1965 and 1992), basketball games, world team tennis, indoor soccer, the 1983 United States Figure Skating Championships, and the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Raw and Smack Down. Concerts were also held in the arena including that of Elvis Presley?s final New Year's Eve show on December 31, 1976 and Carole King and James Taylor?s concert on June 26, 2010. The arena has been used as a location for several Hollywood films such as ?The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh?, a 1979 basketball film starring Flip Wilson, Stockard Channing, and Julius Erving, ?Sudden Death?, a 1995 film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as a retired Pittsburgh fire fighter who tries to save the Vice President from terrorists during the pivotal Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals, ?Rock Star?, a 2001 film starring Mark Wahlberg as a musician heading to the Pittsburgh arena for a concert in 1987, ?Zach and Miri Make a Porno?, a 2008 Kevin Smith film and ?She's Out of My League?, a 2010 romantic comedy movie.