Used, and reconsidered properly, an old gymnasium can have a number of possible uses after its life as a school’s primary competition space is over. Over the course of this long-term series of occasional blog posts, we’ve hit on many of the major ones, including repurposing as general athletics space, conversion into classrooms, etc.
At Roanoke, they have kept both of their old gyms around.
- Old gym series: Amherst, Randolph-Macon (January 2007)
- St. Norbert (September 2010)
- Wittenberg (November 2010)
- Loras Fieldhouse (March 2018)
- Doremus Gymnasium, Washington and Lee (March 2018)
- Catholic University Fieldhouse (January 2026)
Roanoke is now on its third basketball gymnasium of the past century-plus, with the Cregger Center opening in 2016, replacing the Bast Center, which is absolutely a gymnasium straight out of the 1980s. This post is about the even older gym on campus, however, Alumni Gym. I took the photo at the top of this post when I was there in December of 2023, and it still looked very much like its old self, with the basketball floor still visible, etc. It functioned as a varsity weight room.
Since then, it has been remodeled and looks pretty sharp, and still performs the same function, but now is probably a much better draw for potential student-athletes.
You can still see the roof supports at the top of the photo but the surface has been replaced with something a little more permanent and more appropriate for the work. Plus, new equipment.
Basketball was played in this building from 1911 through 1966. For 10 years after that, the Maroons played at the Salem Civic Center, a little over a mile down the road, but they returned from 1977 until the Bast Center was opened in 1982. And of course, now the Cregger Center is home to Roanoke’s men’s and women’s basketball teams, not to mention frequently home to the Division III women’s basketball Final Four. Here’s a photo from Roanoke’s archives of basketball being played in Alumni Gym.
