The Old Roller Skating Rink

On the second floor of 26 Portland Street, there used to be a really great roller skating rink. On Saturdays, I'd go there and skate... around and around, over and over...

And the music was canned theater organ stuff.

We're talkin' late 50's, very early 60's here.

This was not only before Wormtown, it was before hippies, before the Comic Strip night club in Lincoln Square, before the JFK assassination, and way before anyone even thought of building a downtown mall.

Eventually, the roller skating rink closed. For a while, they operated a roller skating rink inside the main hall at Mechanics Hall, but I only went there once. The wooden floor just wasn't made for roller skating. Meanwhile, 26 Portland Street eventually became a car dealership.

I did have a chance to go inside that second floor space, where the roller skating rink used to be, only one more time since it had closed, all those many years ago. It was when I ended up buying the Jeep that I still own. As I went through Bancroft's inventory of Jeep Cherokees with the salesman, we ended up walking through that whole second floor area.

We'd been in there for a few minutes before I realized that this was where the roller skating rink used to be. And I told the sales guy, this used to be a very popular roller skating rink...

It was strange to have all those cars crowded onto the roller skating rink.

I wonder what that building was originally constructed for?

At any rate, there may be yet another life for the old roller skating rink, now. The owners of the property want to turn the second floor of that building into apartments.

They hope to have it done by next fall.