A Night at the Palestra

Ever since college, I've been obsessed with college basketball. I had been to a few college games at the University of MD before college and I'd even played on a team for two years when I was around 11 (and absolutely hated it). But when I started sitting--rather, standing--in the student section at my own school, watching our team rise from obscurity to a top 10 team, I got hooked. I loved the feel of the arena when it was full and you could feel the bleachers shake with energy.

When I went to a game at Penn's palestra with my parents recently, I gained a whole new appreciation for the kind of energy an arena can generate. The palestra, a graceful brick arena built in 1927, is the holy grail for college basketball fanatics. It's not just that this place has hosted more games than any other in the NCAA's, or that you can still see the original exposed brick with its hand-painted signs. The key to its popularity is that the palestra is a fantastic place to watch basketball.

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I doubted this when we first arrived and hiked up the steep concrete stairs to our seats, near the top of the seats behind the hoop. I wasn't thrilled that I'd be sitting for two hours squeezed between people on a steel bench. But when I sat down, I was shocked to see how close I felt to the court. At almost double the size of my college's arena, the palestra nonetheless seems like an intimate space.

The sense of history at the palestra is palpable, particularly in my case since my grandparents watched games here. Banners from decades past hang from the arched ceiling. There is no jumbo tron, just a simple scoreboard behind each basket. The crowd noise reverberates and the sound of Penn's small pep band filled the arena; no need for music to be piped in through speakers to get the crowd excited. The opposing student sections--Penn was playing St. Joe's, which is using the palestra as its home arena this year--traded taunts via rolls of fabric with handwritten slogans passed over the students' heads like a wave.

Given the atmosphere of this place, it's no surprise that the palestra played a role in making basketball popular in America. The first ever NCAA tournament was held here and Philadelphia's famous Big 5 tournament was played here for decades. New arenas may have more comfortable seats, fancy boxes, and jumbo trons, but the historian in me can't help but feel at home in the palestra.