The first time I heard of the Coliseum was in 1987.  While browsing a vintage highway plan book from the early 1950's, I encountered a page detailing how the proposed thorofares would be of help in boosting the flow of traffic to and from sporting events.  A simple map was shown with arrows pointing to the Stadium, Pimlico Racetrack, and to "The Coliseum," shown to be somewhere in the vicinity south of Druid Park reservoir.  The only text mentioning its purpose in this piece simply said "You may have noticed the heavy volume of traffic at the Stadium, Racetrack, or Coliseum following sporting events...."  At the time, my imagination envisioned an impressive, but dated, turn of the century outdoor sporting arena in the midst of the Reservoir Hill Community, possibly on the Southern banks of the lake.  Still, it boggled me that I had never heard of the venue ever before. 

In the following years, my mind only came back to pondering the mysterious Coliseum from time to time, until I saw it painted upon an odd building in the general vicinity shown on that simple map.  I ultimately decided to find out about the Coliseum once and for all.  The truth of the issue is not quite as storied as my mind's image of a lovely venue with columns and arches, but it certainly is interesting nonetheless.  Considering all the attention and sentimentality associated with places such as Memorial Stadium, it is still strange indeed that the Coliseum garners little more than a footnote in Baltimore's Sports history, especially when one discovers it's still there...

Construction of the privately funded (hard to believe in this era of sports lotteries, public funding, and Owners' sales of naming rights) Coliseum Club began in 1938, on a site at 2201 North Monroe Street, in an ambitious effort to replace a smaller facility located on the Fallsway.  Built at a cost of about $150,000 (about what a suspended sign would cost on a sports venue today), and aiming to seat seven thousand people, the venue was designed to host indoor sporting events such as Wrestling, Boxing, and Basketball, with the added possibility of hosting tennis tourneys, roller skating contests, and civic events, while offering three storefronts to be leased out.  It is not certain wether the additional activities actually occurred at the Coliseum, but it is very certain that the Basketball games and fights did take place there regularly, and in later years, skating was a regular leisure attraction there as well.

The Coliseum opened for business on April 27, 1939, with the 6,100 (actual) seat facility hosting a ten round feature fight between Steve Manakos and Mickey Makar.  In the years following, the venue would grow increasingly popular among Baltimoreans, hosting weekly feature fights, and offering a very full fall schedule which saw it in use almost daily.  Even in this segregated era of Baltimore, the location of the Coliseum drew quite diverse crowds watch its games and matches on the polished maple floors.

The Coliseum's heyday would be short lived however, partly as a result of a Titanic type of hex which its Management invoked on it.  Early promotional literature touts the Coliseum as completely fireproof, but about 7:30 in the morning of December 14, 1952, a two alarm fire broke out in the Southeast portion of the building, resulting in over $50,000 in damage that included a warped roof and water buckled floors.  Both the wrestling events and Bullets basketball games that followed that week were performed only for the television cameras, as spectators were barred from entering until the damage was shored up.

The plain, sand colored exterior leads one to assume that the old Coliseum only has Industrial roots.	The space of the old "storefronts" is still easily visible along the Southern edge of the building.
The only tangible evidence of the Coliseum name comes from this painted wall visible when looking South from above the venue.