52nd City

RIP (sorta): West Pine Gym

Somehow, it snuck up on me that the historic Baumen-Eberhardt Center was going to stop hosting basketball games, despite the fact that the Chaifetz Arena has been a growing concern in Midtown for well over a year. Tonight, the SLU women's basketball team will pull the curtain on the venue as a public play facility, with the SLU athletic department leaving the cramped confines of the West Pine Gym in coming weeks and months.

STLtoday's got a nice little video feature on the old structure here. And we are fully hoping for game report tonight from Ecology of Absence.

The video:
http://videos.stltoday.com/p/video?id=1739858

Update: made a quick inquiry to SLU and the upshot is that the building will remain standing. The gym will be used for rec purposes and as a spill facility for the nearby Simon Rec Center. The offices that fan along both hallways will be used for non-athletic office use. And, as an incidental bit of trivia, the venue was occasionally used as spill space in the old days, as the NBA St. Louis Hawks played some matches there when the Kiel Center, Arena and Washington University's Fieldhouse were not available. So, there!