Elvis, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Zeppelin and Hendrix all played it, the Milwaukee Bucks won their only championship era home games in it, and it is still working. The UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena, at 400 West Kilbourn Avenue downtown, opened on April 9, 1950 as the Milwaukee Arena. Designed by Eschweiler and Eschweiler and built for $7.6 million with a distinctive barrel roof, it was among the first arenas designed for broadcast television - a bet on the new medium that paid off across seven decades of events. The NBA history is layered: the Milwaukee Hawks were the first tenants from 1951 to 1955, then the expansion Bucks arrived in 1968 and stayed twenty years, compiling a .736 home winning percentage through the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Sidney Moncrief eras before moving out in 1988. The name has tracked the city's civic reshuffles - MECCA Arena when the convention complex opened in 1974, Wisconsin Center Arena in 1995, U.S. Cellular Arena in 1998, and UWM Panther Arena since 2014 - while Robert Indiana's famous 1978 pop-art court, with its giant orange M's, became the most recognizable floor in basketball. Today the barrel roof covers the UW-Milwaukee Panthers men's basketball, the AHL's Milwaukee Admirals and the MASL's Milwaukee Wave, with 8,910 permanent seats stretching to 12,700 maximum and 10,783 for basketball. The event log beyond sport includes presidential speeches, the 1998 Davis Cup semifinal, the 2003 U.S. Gymnastics Championships, circuses, roller derby and concert generations from Sinatra and Pavarotti to Green Day and the Beastie Boys. Seventy-five years in, the arena is Milwaukee's living room of record - the building where the city's entire entertainment history can claim a seat. The Bucks even came home for a 2017 return game at the MECCA against Boston, selling out the old bowl in minutes - a night that confirmed what Milwaukee already knew: the barrel-roofed building is not a relic but the city's collective memory with a box office.

Type: Stadium / Arena

Address: 400 W Kilbourn Ave, Milwaukee, WI, United States, 53203

Website: https://uwmilwaukeepantherarena.com

Cover Charge: 1

Capacity: 12700

Opening Date: 09/04/1950

Accessible