How College Basketball’s Most Historic Gymnasium Came About
Ralph Morgan
When the writer was undergraduate manager of basketball in 1905, Weightman Hall became the first home of Pennsylvania’s basketball team. While it was building, the writer made life miserable for the architect, Frank Miles Day, and for Provost Charles Curtis Harris, both of whom received many protests from this insistent young man that the planned seating capacity for basketball was woefully inadequate.
The later Dr. Tait McKenzie who had come to the University as Director of Physical Education in 1904, was the only sympathetic listener to these protests. Dr. McKenzie worked manfully to secure a larger capacity and when our pleas were rejected, worked on the seating arrangement in the limited space available.
If the movable stands contrived for Weightman Hall about 1906 were not the first of their kind, they were among the first and crammed some 2,000 people into very limited space, leaving practically no out of bounds space, much to the displeasure of most of Pennsylvania’s opponents, particularly those who were known later as the Ivies.
Many times during Pennsylvania’s great seasons of 1916, 1918 and through 1922, Weightman Hall proved totally inadequate. We certainly broke all the fire laws of the city and at the famous four period overtime game with Princeton in 1920, the Franklin Field ticket office figured we turned away more people at the ticket office than we seated inside Weightman Hall.
The condition continued to get no better and with the advent of the Council of Athletics with Sydney E. Hutchinson as Chairman, the writer continued this one-man campaign for a better place to play and watch basketball.
The first encouragement was received from Charles L. Borie, Chairman of The Trustees’ Committee on Building and Grounds, who was much impressed with the writer’s exhibits of the new Field Houses being erected by the Western Conference Universities, particularly Wisconsin and Minnesota. Mr. Borie soon became an advocate for a larger building for Pennsylvania. Recollection places this about 1921 or 1922 but the Council on Athletics turned down our recommendation.
Several years went by with the writer putting the heat on Sydney Hutchinson, who was engrossed with first enlarging and then double-decking Franklin Field. In 1925, Sydney Hutchinson was converted and got behind the proposal and the Palestra was assured.
The writer well recalls the many hours of poring over plans and specifications. The Palestra was to be the finest indoor auditorium in the land, well-lighted, well-ventilated and with a capacity of 10,000 well located seats, about half of which were permanently built-in and the remainder built to roll under the permanent stands to provide two additional practice courts.
Sydney Hutchinson conceived the idea of combining a new gymnasium to add to the palestra and in financing the double-decking of Franklin Field, he provided funds for the new gymnasium and the Palestra and work began in 1926 and the Palestra was open for play on January 1, 1927.
We had our plans and our location agreed upon and then one day, Charlie Borie called the writer on the telephone, “What are we going to call it?” he asked. The conversation resulted in a luncheon, one of many delightful occasions as they were always of absorbing interest as we planned for the future.
“Coliseum” and “Arena” were dismissed as too commonplace. Then Charlie Borie suggested that he and I go out to the University and talk with Dr. William N. Bate, Professor of Greek.
We did so and after presenting our problem which the writer felt would take many hours to solver, were both bowled off our feet.
“That is easy,” said Dr. Bates. “The Greeks had a gymnasia where their young men trained for their feats of prowess, wrestling, gymnastics, tumbling and leaping and the like. And then they had their Palestra, a rectangular enclosure attached to the gymnasium where they displayed their prowess to the view of all who would come to view.”
And so in about five minutes we had our name – Palestra.
It fitted all of our specifications:
Authentic Novel (so old that it was new)
Dignified Descriptive
The only deviation we made was in deference to Philadelphia’s winter weather. We put a roof on our Palestra – the Greeks left theirs open to the weather.
