Historic Windsor Arena, one of North America’s oldest hockey venues, finishing final season

It opened just a year after the old Montreal Forum. It predates Maple Leaf Gardens by almost a decade.

The Windsor Arena, known by residents of the Ontario border city as The Barn, is in its final weeks of operation as one of the oldest indoor hockey rinks to have spectator grandstands.

It was a centre for hockey, even home to a storied NHL team, where future Hall of Famers such as Howie Morenz and Bill Cook laced up their skates. But it also hosted lacrosse games, boxing matches and rock concerts.

Built in 1925, the arena with its arched wooden roof supported by a skeleton of steel, will be "repurposed" as an urban market by next fall, according to the New York Times.

The University of Windsor Lancers men's hockey team played their final regular-season game in the arena last weekend.

"I remember walking in here for the first time when I was eight," Lancers' coach Kevin Hamlin, 50, who also played there as a junior on the Windsor Spitfires, told the Times. "Frankly, even now when I walk in I feel like it's a special place. I can't quite believe it's closing."

The Spitfires left long ago, moving to a new building in 2008, but veteran players and fans have been reminiscing about The Barn as its final hockey season winds down.

"There was nothing like seeing a game at the Barn," one fan wrote. "Sitting right on top of the ice, the place shook with the howl of the fans, a scene I'm afraid the old girl will never experience again."

As the Times noted, the arena hosted its first professional game three weeks after opening between the Stanley Cup champion Victoria Cougars and the New York Americans, who lost 1-0 to the Cougars for a sellout crowd of more than 7,000.

The Cougars moved to Detroit in 1926 to become the NHL Detroit Cougars, eventually to be renamed the Red Wings. But there was no arena yet in Detroit, so the team played its first season at The Barn, then called Border Cities Arena.

No bridge or tunnel linked Detroit and Windsor then, so American fans hopped a ferry to catch the games.

The Barn is well past its glory days but has been hosting university games and recreational leagues.

Windsor Star blogger Mike Frezell remembers playing hockey at The Barn as a 10-year-old some 50 years ago.

"I remember standing at centre ice getting ready for the opening faceoff and looking out, and up, at the crowd of about 25 parents and being in awe," he writes. "It was then, and still is, the biggest stage I was ever on and it took my breath away."

As an adult, Frezell "spent more than a few summer nights inside a steamy Barn" watching the Windsor Warlocks lacrosse team in action or his own children playing broomball on winter Saturday nights.

The building won't be torn down, but like other hockey landmarks will be converted to another use. The Montreal Forum has become a multiplex movie house and Maple Leaf Gardens a supermarket.

"Whatever that final game or event is before the building closes, I'd like to do the last flooding," says rink attendant Randy Cloutier, who started working at The Barn in 1975.

"It would be nice to go around the ice that one last time."