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Phog Allen inside the Allen Fieldhouse crowd of 20,000 there in 1968, months before his assassination. World-famous entertainers have performed there, from Harry Belefon- te—who performed the first concert in Allen in November 1964—to Louis Armstrong, Ike and Tina Turner, Elton John, the Beach Boys and comedian Bob Hope. In 2004, President Bill Clinton spoke alongside former Kansas Sen. Robert Dole. The Fieldhouse hosted KU commencements when bad weather forced participants away from Memorial Stadium and indoors. It hosted enrollment in the fall when students still pulled cards for classes. Two indoor track world records were set in the building. Vol- leyball, wrestling, even crew teams practiced there. All of the greatest athletes in KU’s rich history—Wilt Chamberlain, Gale Sayers, Jim by Bob Luder, Ryun, Lynette Woodard—practiced or com- photos from Kenneth Spencer peted in the building that is commonly re- Research Library, University of Kansas ferred to as “the house that Wilt built.” Allen Fieldhouse has been everything to ev- Though not modern like many of eryone. “Allen Fieldhouse is considered the front porch of the University,” says John Novotny, the athletic venues across the country, who was associated with the university from 1966 through 1981 as an academic coun- its intimate atmosphere and selor, assistant athletic director and first Wil- liams Education Fund director. historic qualities are what make Of course, there’s what Allen Fieldhouse is mostly known for: the home of Jayhawks Allen Fieldhouse special. basketball. There are all of those great teams, play- ers and coaches (six of the eight who have As a junior at Salina Central High School, Richard Konzem wasn’t unlike most other wide-eyed farm kids grow- “Being a farm kid from Kansas … the limestone exterior and size of coached the Jayhawks did so in the field- ing up in central Kansas. He was unsure of what the future held beyond high school. He wanted to go to college Allen Fieldhouse was awe-inspiring,” says Konzem, who went on to house) who have mostly won there, including but had yet to give any real thought as to where. spend more than a few years working in the building as manager of 33 conference championships (and a nation- A trip to a state basketball tournament in March 1975 changed all that. KU’s men’s track and field program, as a director for the University’s al-record 14 straight during the Bill Self era), Williams Education Fund and as an assistant athletic director. “And a 69-game home-court winning streak (not to As the van carrying the Central boys basketball team turned right off of Iowa Street and headed down the hill on 15th, they had the thing you don’t see in many arenas: the windows.” mention two other separate streaks of 62 and Konzem, the team’s manager, had his gaze immediately drawn to the huge expanse of limestone and brick to his right, 55 games) and two teams that won NCAA just west of James Naismith Drive. It was the most majestic fortress young Konzem had ever seen to that point. And The most cherished quality of Allen Fieldhouse, one the old barn has national championships—in 1988 and 2008. once inside, the rays of light shining through the upper windows, illuminating the basketball court below, the new Tartan- worked hard to attain over its nearly 66 years, is its history. All the great games against Big Eight and surfaced track surrounding the court, expansive rafters, clouded glass office doors with images of Jayhawks painted on Big 12 conference rivals and national pow- them: It was all magnificent. ers, the most memorable of which just might “I decided right then I was coming to (the University of Kansas),” Konzem says. KU’s Front Porch The Fieldhouse, labeled as such because its floor originally consist- be a 150-95 victory over Kentucky in 1989. Salina Central went on to win the state boys basketball championship that weekend. But Allen Fieldhouse already had ed of clay and dirt, has hosted a vast array of events and luminaries And perhaps the most cherished moment in claimed yet another devotee, just as it has on the hundreds of thousands who have walked through its doors before over the decades. Sen. Robert Kennedy spoke before a house-record the building’s 66 years, the return of Cham- and since. berlain to the Jayhawk fold and the halftime 52 53 ceremony and speech that left no dry eyes in “I think it’s the best sports venue in major sports, not just college bas- the house. ketball,” says Blair Kerkhoff, sportswriter for The Kansas City Star, The Jayhawk men sold out 306 consecutive who has covered college sports since 1989 and covered Jayhawks games dating back to 2001, a streak only a basketball from ’89 to ’97. “It’s as intimate as a 16,000-seat building worldwide coronavirus pandemic could inter- can be, and the five minutes before a game—historical video, player rupt. In 2014, the Guinness Book of World Re- introductions—isn’t duplicated anywhere.” cords verified Allen Fieldhouse as the loudest indoor arena. Former Duke player and longtime ESPN bas- A Rich History The history of Kansas Jayhawks basketball is inextricably tied to the ketball analyst Jay Bilas called Allen Field- history of the game itself. The Jayhawks played their first season in house the “St. Andrews of college basketball.” 1898-99, and their first head coach was none other than the inventor of the game itself, Dr. James Naismith. They originally played in the basement of old Snow Hall, with a 14-foot-high ceiling, before moving into old Robinson Gymnasium in the early 20th century. In 1927, the team moved to Hoch Auditorium, with a capacity of 3,800, for the next 28 years. It was during this time that the Kansas basketball program was turned over to a Naismith disciple, Dr. Forrest C. “Phog” Allen. Allen would go on to coach the Jayhawks for 39 seasons and establish himself as “the Father of Basketball Coaching” for his innovations to the modern game. A key moment in Allen’s coaching career came in 1948, when Kansas State constructed an 11,000-seat fieldhouse known as Ahearn Field House. Allen had brought up a new basketball arena to the University of Kansas and state in 1927, but the Great Depression and World War II quickly curtailed those plans. The construction of Ahearn re- ignited Allen’s desire for KU to have one of the largest basketball venues in the Midwest, if not the U.S. In 1949, a bill was renewed that appropriated $750,000 in state funding for the project, estimated to cost $2.5 million. The actual cost was between $2.6 and $3 million. The Fieldhouse was constructed with 700,000 bricks and 2,700 tons of structural steel that was secondhand from Chicago and used during the Korean War. The University had to agree to include the word “armory” in its original plans so that it could procure the steel during wartime. “We’d never built anything this big,” Warren Corman, one of the original architects on the project, said last year on an episode of The Jay- hawker Podcast. “The structure itself was the most important thing, because it had to be built to last forever. And it had to span 200 feet, because the floor itself was 50 feet.” Corman said one of his key responsibilities on the job was to count weekly to ensure there were 17,000 seats that would fit into the fieldhouse. “I remember it as a heated big barn,” he says. “I had no idea it would be so iconic.” The year 1954 was one where the Father of Basketball Coaching suf- fered a rare loss of an argument. It came down to Allen and Naismith as to whose name would adorn the Fieldhouse. Allen wanted his A young fan rides the tail of Big Jay, Tina Turner performing in The Fieldhouse and Indoor track meets Construction of Allen Fieldhouse mentor to have the honor, but it was put to a vote among KU students, 54 55 and Allen came out on top. As a consolation, Michigan Street, which ran along the east side of the Fieldhouse, was renamed Naismith Drive. On March 1, 1955, the Jayhawks men’s basketball team defeated archrival Kansas State 77 to 67 in the dedication game for Allen Fieldhouse in front of an overflow throng of 17,228, to this day the attendance record for a game there. They played on a maple wood floor screwed into supports planted in the clay floor. Something for Everyone Throughout its first three decades, Allen Fieldhouse was used by student-athletes from just about every sport KU sponsored. “In the old days, they took the basketball court out in the off-season,” Novotny says. “People forget how big track was back then. Basketball hadn’t gotten as big as it got when Larry Brown came [in 1983] and then was followed by Roy Williams and Bill Self.” Fieldhouse architect Corman recalls, “I can remember the women’s rowing team up in the concourse practicing. There was athletic stuff happening all over the building.” “I remember the football team practiced for the ’81 Hall of Fame Bowl crosswise on the basketball court,” Konzem says. “At the same time, the baseball team practiced in the upper corner in batting cages.” But basketball was king, and as the sport grew in popu- larity and financial impact, so did the Fieldhouse and its atmosphere, which over the years added championship Wilt Chamberlain and coach Phog Allen; First game in the Allen Fieldhouse against KSU 01-03-1955; Installing the new scoreboard; and individual banners throughout the rafters and, in The Fieldhouse surrounded by field 1988, a long banner hung high up in the north rafters that read: Pay Heed to All Who Enter—Beware of the Phog.

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