‘Bringing the Alps to the City’: Early Indoor Winter Sports Events in the Modern City of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

There is a close link between urbanisation and the rise of sports. However, one usually does not associate winter sports with cities. By the late 1880s winter sports, especially skiing, had become popular in European and American mountain regions. During that time some winter sports activities were introduced, mainly for entertainment, to urban areas. The big ice palaces in Russia and North America, where ice skating events were the main focus, are amongst the best examples. It was some decades later that even skiing and other winter sports were transferred to various metropolises of the world. Sources show that in 1927 a first indoor ski palace on artificial snow was opened in Vienna; a few years later similar winter sport spectacles took place in Paris and London; Boston and New York followed shortly after. Parallel to this phenomenon the film industry, which developed at about the same time, also helped spread the white sport to urban consciousness. This paper focuses on the establishment of urban winter sports events. The German sociologist Gerhard Schulze's theory on the Erlebnisgesellschaft shall be the theoretical frame.