Payne Whitney Gymnasium

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The Payne Whitney Gymnasium is the gymnasium of Yale University. Built in the prevailing Gothic architecture style of the campus in 1932, it is a remarkable building for a gymnasium, possessing a Gothic tower and a third-floor swimming pool. It is the second-largest gym in the world, after one in Moscow, Russia.[link] The building houses the facilities for the basketball, fencing, gymnastics, squash, swimming & volleyball teams. The basketball team plays in the John J. Lee Amphitheater, which was named in 1996 for John J. Lee, '56 M.Eng., a star basketball player and benefactor in restoration projects. It holds

The building was donated to Yale by John Hay Whitney, of the Yale class of 1926, in honor of his father, Payne Whitney. One myth holds that Mrs. Payne Whitney wanted Yale to build a great cathedral with her money, but that the University preferred a gym. Since she was getting old, the story goes, administrators thought they could get away with a bit of subterfuge. They instructed architect John Russell Pope to design a gym that could pass for a cathedral. Then, when it was completed, the President drove Mrs. Whitney past the finished building. She died not long after, content in the knowledge that she had given Yale such a grand house of worship, and not what came to be known as "the cathedral of sweat."

The stuffed original Handsome Dan, the bulldog mascot of Yale and the first college mascot in the United States, resides in a glass cabinet near the entrance to the building.

External Links

[Payne Whitney Gym - YaleBulldogs.com]
[Payne Whitney Gym at Yale.edu]

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