This lot is closed. Bidding ended on 12/10/2001.
Before this pair of original seats from the now-defunct Chicago Stadium were ever put on the ground, funding for the cavernous arena on West Madison Street almost never got off the ground. It took a bond issue to get it done and on March 29, 1929 the 20,000-seat edifice opened for a Tommy Loughran-Mickey Walker fight. This history-heavy lot includes not only the two cherry-red wooden seats but an actual bond certificate in the amount of $30 issued by the Chicago Stadium Corporation dated July 1930 and an excellent condition check dated October 24, 1937 drawn on the account of the Chicago Indoor Stadium Corporation for $60 and signed by Arthur Wirtz, the businessman who operated the Stadium and whose son, William Wirtz, later owned the arena's main tenant for decades, the NHL Blackhawks. The seats, used in the 1930s and 1940s, have nicks and scratches and the seat numbers have been removed, but are a vivid echo of when the arena was a palace. The check is matted in a cardboard display under a sepia-toned picture of the arena in its heyday.