Warner Coliseum

The Lee and Rose Warner Coliseum located within the MN State Fair grounds in St. Paul Minnesota is home to numerous horse, and cattle shows, and houses many small businesses in the concourse during the Minnesota State Fair each year come late August. The Coliseum with seating for 5,250 people also features an underground refrigeration system that is used in the winter months for the Minnesota State High School Hockey tournament AA and A playoff rounds, and as a municipal ice rink for many other local ice-hockey leagues. More importantly the Coliseum "was" the former home to the St. Paul Athletic Club in the "former" St. Paul Hippodrome. The original Hippodrome was built in 1906 for the mighty St. Paul Athletic Club hockey team. This "original hippodrome" was torn down in 1942 prior to the Coliseum being erected in 1951. Today the only remnants of the original 1906-1942 Hippodrome are in old photos and in published newspaper stories of the great teams and players that once skated in this location. Each winter when Minnesota State High School players take to the ice at "todays" Lee and Rose Warner Coliseum they are not only skating in a magnificant building to play hockey in, but are playing in one of Minnesotas "Most hallowed hockey grounds", where some of the most legendary players that ever played the game in Minnesota during the St. Paul AC's era. One could say, "at the MN State fair grounds, and in this coliseum- it is the most storied building from Minnesota's hockey history- a building in which Minnesota became "The State-of-Hockey"