Lavietes Pavilion's New Look

Upgrading a venerable basketball arena

Lavietes-to-be: the renovated entry façade, as it will appear by the beginning of the 2017-2018 season

rendering courtesy of Bruner/Cott & Associates, Inc.

Basketball Fans will navigate through construction-work-in-progress, temporarily in abeyance during the Crimson’s season, as they enter Lavietes Pavilion for this season’s games. Although the University’s 2013 master plan for Allston construction envisioned a new and larger arena located farther down North Harvard Street, well past Harvard Stadium, that would have been an expensive and long-term project, with no certain date for completion.

Now, the decision has been made to overhaul Lavietes, which was built in the 1920s as an indoor-track center and converted to basketball use in 1982. The visible construction extends the front façade, ultimately yielding 5,000 square feet of additional space to accommodate new team locker rooms and coaches’ offices. When the work is completed, before next season, fans will pass through a new entry, and be served with upgraded concession, merchandise, and restroom areas. The bleacher seating will be replaced; all the heating, cooling, electrical, and lighting systems will be modernized; and there will be that most au courant of amenities: a jazzy video board and sound system.

The renovation will retain the intimate scale of Lavietes and its proximity to the main campus in Cambridge, and is obviously ready soon—perhaps, one can hope, as a venue for the new Ivy League conference tournament, which launches next March at Penn’s venerable Palestra. Read complete coverage at harvardmag.com/lavietes-16.

Read more articles by John S. Rosenberg
Related topics

You might also like

What Does the $2.8B NCAA Settlement Mean for Harvard?

Athlete-payment case will change little for Ivy League athletes.

The Woman Who Rode Horses Into the Water

Scrapbooking a woman who rode horses into the sea

Filmmaker John Armstrong’s Adventure Documentaries

Filmmaker John Armstrong’s “outdoor adventures” find the human spirit.

Most popular

How MAGA Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

The Trump Administration's Impact on Higher Education

Unprecedented federal actions against research funding, diversity, speech, and more

Paolo Pasco and the art of making crosswords

Paolo Pasco and the art of making crosswords

Explore More From Current Issue

People sit in lawn chairs near a rustic barn at Cider Garden in New Salem on a sunny day.

CiderDays Festival Celebrates All Things Apple

Visiting small-batch cideries and orchards in Massachusetts

Catherine Zipf smiling, wearing striped shirt and dark sweater outdoors.

Preserving the History of Jim Crow Era Safe Havens

Architectural historian Catherine Zipf is building a database of Green Book sites.  

Room filled with furniture made from tightly rolled newspaper sheets.

A Paper House in Massachusetts

The 1920s Rockport cottage reflects resourceful ingenuity.