On this day in Boston Celtics history, in 1993, ground was broken on what would become the team’s home in the modern era, the so-called “new” Boston Garden currently referred to as TD Garden.
Boston had previously played in the building built in 1928 that began its life as the “Boston Madison Square Garden” (it had been designed by boxing promoter Tex Rickard, the intellectual author of the third iteration of the New York City arena of the same name sans ‘Boston,’ thus the name later shortened to ‘Boston Garden’) from its founding in 1946 as one of the premier teams of the Basketball Association of America (BAA – a precursor league of the NBA) up until 1995.
The Celtics had been looking for a new arena back into the 1970s, nearly moving to Revere, Massachusetts before Delaware North — the company that owns the building and the NHL team the Boston Bruins — secured permission and funding for building TD Garden.