Encyclopedia Dubuque
"Encyclopedia Dubuque is the online authority for all things Dubuque, written by the people who know the city best.”
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Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.
ROLLER SKATING
ROLLER SKATING. One of early Dubuque’s most popular recreational activities. On September 7, 1882, Professor Levi, proprietor of skating rinks in Chicago, Memphis and Nashville, demonstrated roller-skating to an invitation-only crowd of Dubuque residents. Levi announced he would also give lessons.
Roller rink development soon followed. A rink was opened at 12th and Main STREETS soon after the Levi demonstration. On December 22, 1883, another rink was unveiled between Ninth and Tenth to an invitation-only crowd. Located in a brick building, the rink measured 40 feet by 90 feet. The proprietor, H. T. Shepard, was described as having similar businesses in California and elsewhere. On February 14, 1884, Hyde Clark opened a roller skating rink. Small in comparison to those that followed, the rink measured 50 feet by 114 feet.
Ignoring warnings in 1886 by the Women's Homeopathic Medical Society in Chicago that skating offered more dangers to good health than benefits, skating rinks continued to flourish. The Stearns-Thompson Rink on Couler Avenue boasted galleries from which an estimated two thousand people could watch the skaters. The rink was one of the largest in Dubuque at 50 feet by 150 feet. Four hundred skaters were said to be able to use the hard Michigan maple floor at one time.
Among the last rinks to open were those at the Shooting Park in 1906, 6th and Iowa in 1908, and on the Fourth Street extension near the Municipal Athletic Field. So popular did the activity become that citizens petitioned the City Council in September 1915, for the city to construct a rink.
On September 30, 1915, the municipal roller skating rink opened in the converted Flick Box Factory on Seventh Street. Known as the Riverview Roller Rink, the facility had a floor 140 feet by 100 feet. Announcements at the time boasted the rink would also have a gentlemen's smoking room, ladies’ restroom, and ample room for spectators. Lessons were available for beginners and a troupe of expert skaters were scheduled for demonstrations on the afternoons and evenings of October I, 2, 3, 1915.