by Erin Lamb
Special Projects Editor

Courtesy University Archives The Smith Center undergoes construction in 1973.

The opening of the Smith Center in 1975 ended what The Hatchet termed a "40-year odyssey of broken promises." The appeal of a new "field house" had been used to lure recruits since the 1930s, after University President Cloyd Heck Marvin announced in 1931 that GW would have a new gym by 1932. Complaints about the condition of the "Tin Tabernacle," the small facility on 20th and H streets that served as a practice gym, and shoddy attendance at Ft. Myer, where the team played its home games, had plagued the program for years.

As The Hatchet wrote in 1970, "When Bob Faris and Red Auerbach were recruited as stellar athletes for GW 40 years ago, their coach promised them a new gym when they graduated. When All-Ameican basketball player Bob Tallent was lured away from the University of Kentucky and its NCAA championship runner-up squad in 1967, he was promised a new field house.

"Now, Bob Faris is athletic director at GW, Red Auerbach is general manager of the Boston Celtics, Bob Tallent is coach of the present Colonial hoop team and the basketball team until this year played its home games 10 miles from the campus and practiced five times a week in the 'Tin Tabernacle,' GWıs equivalent of a gym."

Multiple times throughout the years, donors pledged money to the University, ostensibly to built a new athletic center, only to have the money go to other projects. The Hatchet reported in 1970, "A lack of funding has held up field house plans so far. The scarcity of government funds and a shortage of donations forced postponement. In an agreement reached when football was dropped at GW in 1966, the University promised the Athletic Department a quarter of a million dollars every year toward the building of a field house. Later promises to the same effect proved to be equally empty." It wasnıt until Washington philanthropist Charles E. Smith donated an unspecified amount to the cause that plans for a new field house became a reality.

Even after the money was secured, the Smith Center faced a series of obstacles during construction. Originally meant to cost $5 million, the building was finished $1.6 million over the original estimate. Union strikes pushed back the opening from May 1 to Nov. 11, 1975. Assistant Athletic Director Bernie Swain was quoted in The Hatchet saying that union members struck for improved working conditions, pay increases and better hiring procedures. Construction of the basketball court was delayed three months, increasing construction costs by $30,000. Delays in the court construction also impeded bleacher construction. Two of the squash rooms were not approved for opening, and the swimming pool was also not ready for the official opening.

The length of time it took for the Smith Center to come to pass had been frustrating for everyone involved. The Hatchet wrote a fictionalized version of the chain of events based on the Biblical story of creation. Highlights of the story included University President Lloyd Elliott placing God on hold on the telephone, Athletic Director Bob Faris placing Elliott on hold and, at the very end, God placing Elliott on hold.

On opening day, all concerns flew out the door, as everyone recognized that the Smith Center was, as The Hatchet termed it, "a dream come true." For the first time in the Universityıs history, all GW teams were under one roof. The burgeoning basketball programs were the teams most affected by the expansion, but gymnastics and wrestling also finally had a place to call home. Indoor winter facilities for the baseball and tennis teams were also included in the original plans. The Hatchet described the new arena as "flashy and brassy" and reported that the only complaint overheard about the new arena were from a few "basketball traditionalists" who preferred a wood basketball floor to the new treated wood flooring.

The basketball team got off to a great start in its new home, slaughtering St. Leoıs of Florida, 113-84. The Smith Center has proven to be a great place for both the womenıs basketball program, which is consistently ranked in the Top 25, and the menıs program, which had great success in the Œ90s, and whose current season has only a single loss at home. n