Even before the historic Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston heavyweight boxing championship match of 1965, the Birch Street area of Lewiston had a significant claim to fame in the world of sports.

It was the site of St. Dom’s Arena, a community building that grew from extraordinary volunteer efforts. Although hockey on its ice rink was a major focal point, basketball fans will remember some great events that took place there on a remarkable wooden floor that was the largest of its kind in the world.

Construction of St. Dom’s Arena began in the late 1940s. By 1951, an ice plant had been installed, bringing indoor hockey to the Twin Cities fans.

The building hosted other events, and around 1955 the building also had a new portable hardwood floor that was bigger than any other similar floor by some 100 square feet.

Walter Brown, founder of the Celtics and manager of Boston Garden, was a hockey fan first and foremost and he actually had a financial hand in the construction of St. Dom’s Arena. The floor was one of the last additions to the building before fire broke out on a Sunday morning in November 1956.

The Boston Celtics featuring Coach Red Auerbach and standout Bob Cousy played exhibition games on that portable floor, and on a replacement that became a part of the Central Maine Youth Center when it was reconstructed in the late 1950s.

Roger P. Saucier wrote a detailed account of early Lewiston hockey and the history of St. Dom’s Arena in a program published for the CMYC dedication Jan. 17, 1959.

Saucier said some sections of that record-holding floor had been stored outside the arena at the time of the fire. They were to be returned to the manufacturer, and the floor was to rebuilt, reclaiming its position as the world’s largest.

That history by Saucier also included some insight into Lewiston’s earliest hockey history. He goes all the way back to a 1916 article in the French-language newspaper Le Messager.

It said, “On Sunday afternoon, January 26, 1916, the people of Lewiston and Auburn witnessed the first hockey game ever played in this city. The game took place on the Association St. Dominique (ASD) rink on Bartlett Street in ideal weather and attracted a crowd of 300 interested sportsmen and women. The Association St. Dominique Club blanked the visiting Metropolitan Club of Auburn by a 7-0 score.”

Not only was St. Dom’s hockey off to a historic start, but Le Messager also reported a day later that in February of 1916 Bates College was to play its first-ever hockey game against Bowdoin College on a new Bates College rink.

Those games were played outdoors, of course, so the construction of the massive St. Dom’s Arena nearly 40 years later was an exceptional undertaking and a major factor in the history of local hockey. The loss of the arena in that catastrophic fire is still felt deeply by many local residents.

Later years brought more hockey fame to the rebuilt CMYC, also called the Central Maine Civic Center and now known as the Androscoggin Bank Colisée.

The Maine Nordiques were the primary tenant at the Civic Center from 1973 to 1977. That colorful team had a cast of characters right out of the movie “Slap Shot,” according to the Colisée Web site. They were members of the old North American Hockey League, and, in the end, it was the demise of the league itself that cut the Nordique era short.

The Lewiston Maineiacs, a junior ice hockey team of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, came in 2003, and their history is still being written.

However, it’s the area high schools that are the longest continuous tenants of the building that followed St. Dom’s Arena in 1958. The strong showing of Lewiston and St. Dom’s high schools has resulted in several state and New England high school championships through the years.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and a native of Auburn. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].