Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:33:00

The Madhouse on McDowell still holds court at the state fairgrounds. Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum at 1826 West McDowell Road opened on 3 November 1965 with the Ice Follies, a privately funded seven-million-dollar arena billed as the most modern in the Southwest - and its engineering backed the boast: a saddle-shaped, double-curvature cable roof over a perfect circle, designed by Lescher and Mahoney with structural work by T.Y. Lin, that cut air-conditioning volume and gave all of its seats a clear view. The Phoenix Suns moved in for their 1968 debut and stayed until 1992, and the nickname - coined by Suns broadcaster Al McCoy - captured the din of the era's playoff crowds. The building's ledger runs far past basketball: Roadrunners hockey across three leagues, roller derby, World Team Tennis, indoor soccer, Ringling Bros. circuses, Mexican rodeos, and a concert history from the Dave Clark Five and Henry Mancini to decades of touring headliners, plus presidential visits from Nixon in 1974 to campaign-era Obama and Trump. Owned and operated by the Arizona Exposition and State Fair Board, the 14,870-seat coliseum now works hardest each autumn, when the Arizona State Fair fills it with its concert series and the fairgrounds around it with everything else; the rest of the year brings sportsman's shows, roller derby's Arizona Derby Dames, graduations and trade events. Sixty years on, the saddle roof remains one of Phoenix's great structures - a mid-century landmark that earned its nickname honestly and keeps the receipts on its walls. Preservationists count the coliseum among Arizona's most significant mid-century structures, and the fair board's continued investment keeps the building working rather than mothballed - a fate that has claimed most of its 1960s peers. The name is the point as much as the nickname: the 1965 legislature dedicated the arena to Arizona's war veterans, and the memorial function survives every change of tenant and era.