NC State’s William neal Reynolds Coliseum is the most important venue ever built by the state of North Carolina, and it always has been ever since the doors opened on the unfinished basketball arena 75 years ago.
Even though the first event in the arena was a Dec. 2, 1949, basketball game against Southern Conference foe Washington and Lee University, the 12,400-seat facility was hardly just for athletics.
In fact, basketball wasn’t even a big deal in the Old North State when designers Milton Small and Ross Edward Shumaker of NC State’s architectural engineering department revealed their plans for the arena, based on a similar design for Duke Indoor Stadium in Durham.
Duke and North Carolina were big football schools at the time, and NC State — which had struggled to maintain its enrollment during the Great Depression — had a part-time basketball coach who doubled as an official for the state highway commission.
State College just wanted a place other than Riddick Stadium to host its Agricultural Week, which had been rained out in 1938, thwarting the opportunity to show off new farm equipment and agricultural advancements to the farmers who traveled from every corner of the state to attend the annual show.
Textile publisher and NC State alumnus David Clark suggested an indoor coliseum to host Ag Week, built on the site of the school’s research barns on the south side of the Southern Railway tracks that bisect campus, as a lasting home for all things agricultural. The proposed facility would have some space devoted to occasional athletics, arts and other activities such as ice skating to pay its operating costs.
Because of the federal funds secured to begin the coliseum’s construction, it was also mandated to be the permanent home for all of NC State’s ROTC programs that taught military science classes and training. The U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines all call Reynolds home to this day.
So while the Memorial Tower — which was officially dedicated a few weeks before Reynolds opened to remember fallen NC State students, faculty, staff and alumni — is a sacred military memorial, the coliseum has been an active military training center, devoted to the school’s land-grant mission of teaching military science.
For commencement in 1941, student body president William C. Friday announced the purchase of structural steel for the new building during his student address, and seven steel girders were quickly erected on a concrete foundation, on view for all to see.
Construction stopped during World War II, and the building’s skeleton sat dormant until 1948, when coach Everett Case’s success in men’s basketball accentuated the need to restart building.
In 16 short months, the largest arena between New York City and New Orleans was mostly completed and ready for public activities that included basketball, spring commencement and general-admission ice skating on the only ice rink in the South.
Ever since, Reynolds has been a college laboratory for new ideas, different activities and cultural advancement, punctuated in every corner with the pungent smell of popcorn.