Memorial Gymnasium (Vanderbilt University)

Memorial Gymnasium is an athletic facility located at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Nicknamed Memorial Gym or simply Memorial, the building is located on the western end of the Vanderbilt campus. It serves as home court for the school's men's and women's basketball programs. Its current seating capacity is 14,168. Memorial Gymnasium was built in the early 1950s. The name was chosen as it was decided to make the gymnasium the campus' memorial to students and alumni killed in World War II; a plaque commemorating these people is displayed in the lobby. At the time, there was a serious discussion within the Vanderbilt community about whether the school should "de-emphasize" athletics, and it was decided that the facility would seat only about 7,000 persons, and would be readily adaptable to other uses. For this reason, the gymnasium floor was built up above its surroundings, more in the nature of a stage. The areas out of bounds along the sidelines were very wide, a stark change from the small facility which it replaced, where the walls were right along the sidelines and players could scrape their shoulders bringing the ball up the court. This necessitated the placement of the benches at the end of the court, which was not highly unusual at the time.

As Southeastern Conference basketball grew in popularity and Vanderbilt established itself as a basketball power in the conference probably behind only Kentucky and Tennessee the seating capacity proved inadequate. The gymnasium had been designed in a way which made it readily expandable, and by the mid-1960s it seated 11,000. A conference championship run in 1966 led to even more demand for seats, and by the end of the decade the facility seated 15,525. It usually sold out, especially for conference games, and in the late 1960s and early 1970s Vanderbilt was consistently in the top ten for attendance in all of college basketball, a remarkable achievement for a middle-sized private institution.

One of the more remarkable events in the history of this venue occurred in the early 1990s when the building served as the host site for a "Battle of the Boulevard" rivalry game between Lipscomb University and Belmont University, two other Nashville institutions with a long history of quality basketball. The game was moved to Memorial when it became apparent that demand for tickets would greatly outstrip their availability at Belmont's former home court, tiny Striplin Gymnasium. However, even event organizers themselves were shocked when the doubleheader between the women's and men's teams sold Memorial out by the halftime of the women's game. This event still holds the all-time attendance record for a NAIA basketball game.

Memorial Gymnasium is today regarded as rather quirky—something of a basketball Fenway Park. The end-of-the-floor bench location is now unique in major college basketball, and said to give Vanderbilt a tremendous home court advantage, since no other facility in which opponents play is arranged in such a way. After former Florida State coach Pat Kennedy complained long and loud about the arrangement after his team lost a first-round NCAA tournament game there, the facility was banned from hosting any further such events, a ban now made rather meaningless by the existence in the same city of the Gaylord Entertainment Center, a far larger, more modern facility which frequently hosts NCAA events. The interior walls were unpainted cinder blocks until very recently. The middle of the three decks has a low ceiling and when the house lights are turned off during game play gives the distinct impression of watching a Cinemascope movie of basketball.

In recent years the facility has been modernized; the addition of a press box, suites, and other ammenities have reduced the seating capacity somewhat. The existence of other high-level sports in Nashville has hurt attendance in recent years and it is not likely that demand for tickets for regular-season games will ever reach the level of the early 1970s. However, the facility is still favored by some basketball purists as an example of a facility designed primarily for that sport (although it also at times housed other facilities for the Vanderbilt athletic operation, such as a swimming pool). It is representative of an era in arena design that is unlikely ever to be revisited.