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Web Exclusives:
Under the Ivy January
28, 2004: Here's
to Jadwin Thirty-five years ago this month, on January 25, 1969, Jadwin Gymnasium made its debut in a nationally televised basketball game between Princeton and Penn (the Tigers won, 74-62). According to PAW, the TV commentators "seemed more interested in the building than the game as well they might: 250,000 square feet, 10,000,000 cubic feet, accommodating 1,000 athletes, 7,500 spectators, six sports, and practice facilities for three more, lectures and concerts, etc, etc." The "multiplex" was on the vanguard of a sports movement that would sweep the country. Like Houston's Astrodome, which was constructed in 1965 as a home for major league baseball's Astros, pro football's Oilers, and the University of Houston's football team and which provided a blueprint for massive stadiums like Seattle's Kingdome (1976), Minneapolis's Metrodome (1982), and Indianapolis's Hoosier Dome (1984), Jadwin was designed to meet many different needs. (Unlike Houston's Astrodome, Jadwin was not designed with padding on every seat.) As PAW explained, "It's easier to describe Jadwin in terms of what it does not do rather than what it is designed for." It did not provide any facilities for golf, hockey, swimming, or rowing. Otherwise, most sports could use some part of the space-age-looking dome. Basketball, track, wrestling, fencing, and squash would hold their winter matches there. Football, soccer, and lacrosse could practice on the lower, dirt-lined level. Ten tennis courts and a regulation infield provided space for the tennis and baseball teams to play and practice. On the main level, partitions and moveable flooring allowed for different practices to take place at once, as well as seating space for 7,500 for concerts, lectures, and Commencement, if necessary. Thirty-five years later, Jadwin is still used for all those purposes and more. Women's teams joined the mix soon after the gym's dedication. Over the years Jadwin has hosted a wide variety of collegiate national championship competitions as well as professional basketball exhibition games and even the World Junior Squash Championships in 1998, the first time the event was held in the U.S. And the basketball court seems to have swiped a few of the legendary leprechauns from the old Boston Garden, the ones that tipped the Celtics' shots into the hoop. According to the Princeton athletics Web site, the men's basketball team is 277-63 in Jadwin and has had perfect home records in six seasons: 1968-69, 1974-75, 1976-77, 1989-90, 1990-91, and 1997-98. The Tigers have lost just 13 of 111 games at home in the past nine years. That success would probably please the gym's namesake, Leander
Stockwell Jadwin '28, captain of the Princeton track team in his
senior year, who died in a car accident just eight months after
graduating. The Princeton Companion notes that at the gym's dedication,
Jadwin's friend and roommate John Dalenz '28 described him as "dedicate
but light-hearted, accomplished but with great modesty." Dalenz
said that during their senior year, he asked Jadwin how a meet had
gone; "Oh, I didn't do so badly," Jadwin replied. The
following day, Dalenz recalled, the New York Times reported, "Princeton's
Jadwin Ties High Hurdle World Record."
Jane Martin ’89 is PAW's former editor-in-chief. You can reach her at paw@princeton.edu
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