🏃 Athletics
War Memorial Hall
Opened 1926First Hokie Stone era
War Memorial Hall on the Drillfield
Photo: Eric T Gunther, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Historic gym on the Drillfield. Closed for years, renovated and reopened in 2024.
Fun facts
- •War Memorial was closed for nearly a decade before its 2024 reopening – students who started and finished at VT never saw it open.
- •Dedicated October 23, 1926, it is a memorial to all members of the VPI community who served in World War I.
Through the years
- 1926
Opened
- 2024
Major renovation and reopening
Sports history
🏋Historic Athletics
Notable Figures
Traditions
The Original Gym
Before Lane Stadium and Cassell Coliseum, War Memorial Hall was the heart of VT athletics. Basketball and wrestling both called this Drillfield landmark home. VT wrestling grew into a national power here, producing the program's first individual NCAA champion in Mekhi Lewis (2019).
Stories that happened here
- The Campus Is an Argument Carried Out in RockA president thought his college looked like a shoe factory. A century later, the Board of Visitors wrote stone into policy. Every building shows who was winning the year it went up.
- Eight Pylons, Eight NamesThe quiet memorial above the Drillfield, the values it stands for, and the eight Hokies on its cenotaph.
- Left Open ForeverThe Drillfield looks like it was always there. It was engineered: a creek valley piped, graded and promised to stay open. The creek comes back up at the Duck Pond.
On the map
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Close by
A short walk from War Memorial Hall.
