An Old Gym at Alfred U. Houses a Rare Wooden Running Track

Alfred University’s old Davis Gymnasium has a wooden track at floor level. (Chronicle photographs by Lawrence Biemiller)

The track is banked where it curves.

Alfred, N.Y. — According to current plans, Alfred University is one semester away from demolishing Davis Gymnasium, a small, dark, dreary facility from the 1920s whose site is due to be occupied by a new ceramics museum. So now’s your chance to see the gym’s most unusual feature — a wooden indoor running track that is set at the edge of the main floor and is banked where it curves around the ends of the building.

Painted distance markings remain.

Students say the track is a rarity, one of the few such wooden tracks left. Indeed, some even want it preserved. I’m no expert in gymnasium history, but I haven’t seen a wood track like this one before. I’ve seen both old and new tracks suspended at mezzanine level, but never a wooden track at floor level.

Like the gym, the track has seen better days. But Tuesday afternoon found one young runner sprinting around it, encouraged by a coach, while a shotputter practiced lobbing shots through the wooden arch trusses supporting the roof. The gym is used not only by varsity teams but also for club sports, social events, and concerts. In addition to the main open space on the lower level, the gym has a warren of small rooms upstairs that once served as coaches’ offices. Students in a freshman art course this semester brought attention to the university’s demolition plan by making the gym’s upper level a temporary museum, installing an uneven but inventive end-of-semester show in the battered offices, corridors, and bathrooms. They called the show “A New Museum for Alfred.”

Dreary as the Davis Gym is, students say that the university’s main gym, the McLane Center, is so crowded that the university should put off tearing down Davis until a replacement gym is open for business. But if you’re interested in seeing the wooden track, it’s probably a good idea to visit sooner rather than later. —Lawrence Biemiller

The gym’s entrance is on the upper level.

The gym itself extends back beneath a curving roof.

Arch trusses made of wood support the roof.

The columns that support the trusses are also wood.

The track goes behind the staircase leading down from the upper level.