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Fieldhouse built to catch*KSU,*MUPrior to arena, Jayhawks used to play basketball in cramped Hoch Auditorium
By*Chuck Woodling
Some call it the House that Wilt Built. Not true.
Allen Fieldhouse was completed months before Wilt Chamberlain showed up on the Kansas University campus.
Many others believe the impetus for construction came when the Jayhawks captured the 1952 NCAA men's basketball championship. Another fallacy.
The Kansas Legislature had approved the $2.5 million to build the fieldhouse more than a year before the Jayhawks won the '52 title.
The truth is that Allen Fieldhouse evolved because KU was not keeping up with the Joneses. Kansas State had Ahearn Fieldhouse. Missouri had Brewer Fieldhouse. Nebraska had Schulte Fieldhouse. Colorado had Balch Fieldhouse. Why didn't KU have one, too?
Kansas was playing basketball in front of a stage in Hoch Auditorium, while its other sports were using antiquated Robinson Gymnasium (not the spacious, refurbished Robinson Gym of today).
The first seed was sown Oct. 7, 1946, when the Kansas Board of Regents instructed KU Chancellor Deane Malott to begin studying possible sites and methods of paying for a new campus sports arena.
Six months later, the Kansas House ways and means committee killed a bill that would have ticketed $650,000 toward the construction of a 10,000-seat fieldhouse on the KU campus. Nevertheless, two years later, the legislature appropriated $750,000 for a KU sports facility. Not enough.
It would be another two years before the state legislature approved the remainder of the funding for the $2.5 million project. A year after that, construction began. Finally, three years later, Kansas University had its fieldhouse.
J-W File Photo
An aerial photo shows Allen Fieldhouse under construction.
Nine long years
From germination to fruition, the process had taken nine long years.
And not everybody was pleased with the final product.
"Everybody complained it was too big and too far away from town," said Warren Corman, a project architect then and KU's chief architect now.
Today, Allen Fieldhouse isn't big enough for the number of fans who want to watch the KU men's team perform, and many of the fans lucky enough to obtain tickets wish the looming limestone structure wasn't so close to campus and its limited parking.
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When the fieldhouse finally was finished, it was the largest basketball arena in this part of the country and one of the biggest in the nation. How many fans the building held at its inception is a matter of conjecture.
Before anyone could count the number of seats, Phog Allen declared that the capacity was 17,000, and who was going to dispute the legendary KU coach and the building's namesake? Privately, KU officials said 16,000 was more like it. Nevertheless, the estimated dedication-day attendance of 17,228 remains the all-time high and a record that cannot be broken because today's official capacity is 16,300 -- nearly 1,000 fewer than the record.
Not until 19 years later did KU officials revise the capacity. In the summer of 1974, new end-zone bleachers were installed as part of a large renovation project, and KU officials announced they had "lost" 1,000 seats. The new number was 16,000.
That was also the summer, incidentally, that the dirt surface that defines a fieldhouse was completely covered. In other words, for the last three decades, Allen Fieldhouse technically has been a misnomer.
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