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| Spectators
crowd the running track above the floor in Alumni Gym for a Cornell-Coe
basketball game Jan. 28, 1911. Cornell won, 38-28. |
Alumni Gym once heart of Cornell sports
Alumni Gymnasium served as the epicenter of physical,
recreational and athletic activity at Cornell College during the first
half of the 1900s. Dedicated in 1909, Alumni was home to 16 Midwest Conference
championships - 12 in wrestling and four in men's basketball - fulfilling
a prediction made by a 1907 Cornellian editorial encouraging student contributions
to the gymnasium fund.
"The erection of a gymnasium would be a turning point in the life
of the school. If we had a gymnasium, athletes would come, and athletes
would develop; we would have winning athletic teams. If we had winning
athletic teams more students would come to Cornell. If more students came
we would have the greatest college in the West."
The student fund-raising goal was $5,000. Shortly they had pledged $8,000.
Almost a century later, enthusiasm over Alumni has been revived as the
building is converted for the art department. A $16 million fine arts
project will transform Alumni for art while renovating and expanding Armstrong
Hall for music and theater. Work began on Alumni in March, with completion
scheduled for June 2002.
Building Alumni eventually led to a more serious undertaking of athletics
at Cornell. President James Harlan, in 1908, called attention to the importance
of "ministering adequately to the needs of the body," saying
"physical development is one of the most valuable things a (person)
can get out of college life."
In the Oct. 12, 1908, Cornellian, President Emeritus William Fletcher
King was quoted as saying, "(A new gymnasium) is an impulse to true
manhood, the manhood of character, through the laying of a perfect foundation
of physical strength."
But critics thought greater emphasis on sport would compromise the academic
principles of the school. "The training necessary to become an accomplished
athlete is destructive of scholarship and should have but little encouragement
from the physical directors and the faculties of our colleges," one
dissenter wrote.
That didn't stop E.B. Soper, an 1868 graduate and Cornell trustee who
in June 1907 began the movement to build a gymnasium. At the 1909 dedication
of Alumni, Soper pointed out that "a place on the college team for
the intercollegiate event would become a reward for scholarship, and a
distinction in the line of work which college courses are designed to
promote."
In the original plan, the basement was to have a class or fencing room,
locker and dressing rooms and showers. The swimming pool was added as
a gift from the Cornell classes of 1916 and 1917, which launched a $10,000
fund drive in March 1916.
On the first floor were offices, men's and women's lockers and showers
and a 70-by-26-foot "ball cage." The second floor had a 122-by-50-foot
gymnasium floor, classrooms and lounging, trophy or apparatus room. The
gymnasium floor as a banquet hall would seat more than 600 people. The
gallery floor had a running track and seating.
The most recognizable team to compete in Alumni was the 1947 wrestling
team, which won the NCAA Division I championship. Cornell is the smallest
college to win such a title. Students would line up for hours outside
Alumni, building fires on the sidewalk to keep warm, all hoping to squeeze
into the 1,000-seat gym to watch a wrestling dual.
"It was bedlam in there for meets," said Hall of Fame athlete
and coach Paul K. Scott '29. "I remember President Cole had
to sit at the edge of the mat because there was no seating."
Team captain Dale Thomas '47 added, "We would have teams like
Michigan State and Indiana come in to wrestle and people would be on the
track and in the rafters. That was something. The place was always packed
and everyone at the school was right there with us."
The Cornell crowd was "tough on the big-name schools when they came
to wrestle," said Thomas, a member of the U.S. Greco-Roman team at
the 1956 Olympics. "We beat them all. It was a fun deal."
Alumni was home to six Olympic wrestlers and hosted training runs by Glenn
Cunningham, former director of athletics at Cornell and a two-time Olympian
in distance running.
George Hahn '54 remembers the final basketball season in Alumni,
before teams moved to the Field House after its completion in 1953. The
1952-53 Rams were 14-5 in all games, 10-2 in the Midwest Conference, winning
the school's first league championship in 17 years.
"We had fans under both baskets and sitting up on the track,"
Hahn recalls. "That was a pretty good advantage for us. It was a
unique place to play. I can still remember going up and down the steps
(to and from the locker room) and I remember the night we clinched the
championship. We beat Coe and it was icing on the cake."
A married student, Hahn's young daughter Debbie was a mascot for the Cornell
cheerleaders, dressing in a cheerleading outfit at the home contests.
Dick Brubaker '55 remembers a game against Grinnell when Cornell
fans entered Alumni early and hung signs and streamers from the rafters
"getting on" the Grinnell star.
"The player was so shook up, his coach didn't even start him that
game," Brubaker said.
Alumni was unusual and cozy. "It was an intimate place to play,"
Brubaker said. "Everyone was very close to you and it wasn't uncommon
to drive to the basket and get bumped up into the bleachers."
Though he was more famous for coaching Cornell to wrestling victories
in Alumni, Scott helped organize an event there that caused a stir on
campus. "It was Dec. 4, 1926, and we decided to have a dance at an
event called Sans Souci," he said. "It met with high disfavor
with the administration and they turned it down flat in a noisy refusal.
But we had the dance, even though it was prohibited. That broke a 70-year
tradition and as a result we made headlines in the Chicago Tribune. It
wasn't until five years later that dancing was legalized at Cornell."
In 1954, when the building was remodeled solely for the department of
health and physical education for women, the running track and balcony
were removed. Women's athletics practiced in Alumni until 1980, although
they hosted competitions in the Field House before then. Before renovations
began earlier this year, the building housed offices for part-time coaches
and college faculty.
"Alumni Gymnasium might not be associated with athletics any more,
but there will always be a lot of memories there," Hahn said. "Especially
with the older guys like me."
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