“Fordham’s Rose Hill Gymnasium is the neighborhood joint where everything is the way you remember it. It is where you’ve never been or where you’re certain to return,” wrote Howie Kussoy in the Post’s tribute to the Rose Hill Gym.
It takes one trip to learn it like the back of your hand because it isn’t much bigger.
Walk straight into the NCAA’s oldest on-campus basketball arena — opened Jan. 16, 1925 — and you’ll hit a wall, forcing you to turn (left or right) into a narrow hallway, past a parade of plaques of former Rams. The 3,200 seats hug the court. Everyone sits in coach, spitting distance from the sideline, beneath a cathedral ceiling and clerestory windows, allowing sunlight to touch the floor.
You can sit anywhere you like: 1971. 1947. 2023
“There is no bad seat because you’re right on top of everything,” said Jim Murphy, Class of ’83. “It brings you back in time. They don’t make ’em like this anymore.”
When Fordham beat Boston College, 46-16, in Rose Hill Gym’s first game — refereed by “The Fordham Flash,” Frankie Frisch, a future Baseball Hall of Famer, then the Giants’ second baseman — it was one of two regulation-sized basketball courts in the city.
Rose Hill Gym — which opened months before Lou Gehrig replaced Wally Pipp — has hosted games every season except 1943-44, when it served as barracks for the U.S. Army, housing hundreds of troops in training during World War II. It was an alternate football facility for the Seven Blocks of Granite and hosted practices for the Knicks, as well as home games for St. John’s, when Alumni Hall was under construction.
It is where Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played his final game for Power Memorial, winning the school’s third straight championship — its 78th win in 79 games — behind then-Lew Alcindor’s 32 points, 22 rebounds and eight blocks.
It was home to a freshman basketball team coached by Vince Lombardi and a JV squad featuring Denzel Washington and coach P.J. Carlesimo. It is where Vin Scully took his first cuts behind the mic and Mike Breen first yelled, “Bang!”
It is where the long-hidden potential resurfaced two seasons ago, when shirtless students painted their faces and opponents grew uneasy, as first-year coach Keith Urgo led Fordham to its most wins since 1971 and rechristened the gym “Rose Thrill.”
“We don’t want bigger or better. We love it here,” said Fordham sophomore guard Jahmere Tripp. “Playing in a gym with that much history, it’s kind of the same feeling to me as playing in a big arena. It’s a different vibe when you walk in the gym. There’s not too many like it in America.”
