The George W. Woodruff Physical Education Center

Entering through the grand archway and the comparatively small automatic sliding doors of the George W. Woodruff Physical Education Center, visitors are transported into a different world. In this space, students, community members, and faculty alike move through an airy yet maze-like universe of hanging walkways, stairs, and suspended concrete shapes. Some of these users mind their business, while others discretely peer at each other’s athletic activities, sometimes without being detected.   

Each morning, for the past three years, while the air is still cold and the sun has yet to rise, the WoodPEC has greeted me with a warm yellow light that seeps through the imposing entrance arch and spills onto the dark concrete at my unwilling feet.  As a three-season athlete, I have spent more hours navigating the glass-walled hallways, striding down the central throughway, and hiking up the four-story winding central staircase than anywhere else on campus (Figure 1). 

For some students, the WoodPEC feels energizing, spacious, light-filled, and welcoming, while for others, the very same gym exudes darkness, constriction, and confusion (Figures 2 and 3).   Many view the physical education center as merely the fastest thoroughfare between the Peavine parking garage and the new student center.  Many more feel confused by the longitudinal weightlifting areas and windowless, subterranean nature of the lower levels and believe that the suspended walkways and cut-through sections that span all four floors are a colossal misuse of space.  And maybe these disgruntled users are correct, maybe the design is not suitable for Emory’s 21st-century athletic needs. 

But, the history of the Woodruff Physical Education Center, a work by John Portman, one of America’s most well-known late 20th-century architects, is deeply rooted in the development of the Emory brand and the social context of athletics at its conception.  The WoodPEC is a product of Emory’s mission to claw its way into the ranks of the nation’s top universities and is a testament to a time when Emory built for vision rather than function.  Through contextualizing the WoodPEC as a building meant to symbolize Emory’s prestige and robustness, we can understand the fundamental historical importance of the Woodruff Physical Education Center for Emory University and can, perhaps, appreciate what it has done for the University despite its dysfunctional design and inadequate facilities.  The structure exemplifies Portman’s trademark style and offers equal athletic opportunities for both genders, positioning Emory at the forefront of athletics and architecture in the US in the 1980s.

Long before Title IX passed in 1972,  ^[1]   women began ardently fighting for a place in college athletics.  Although collegiate females began participating in sports in the early 1900s, the concept of fierce competition stood in sharp contrast to the belief that women should stay home, care for the family, and avoid conflict.  ^[2]    Eventually, in 1966, the Commission on Intercollegiate Sports for Women (CISW) was created to offer intercollegiate organization for female athletics. In 1969, for instance, a schedule of national championships for women’s sports was finally announced.  The young, under-developed CISW (soon changed to Associate for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women – AIAW) could not compete with the dominant, well-funded, male-only National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which held a monopoly on college athletics.  As a result of the profitability of this monopoly, the NCAA fought for a narrow and limited interpretation of the Title IX of Education Amendments of 1972 for college athletics.  When Title IX persisted, the NCAA elected finally to accept women’s sports, effectively putting the AIAW out of business and fully integrating females into the intercollegiate athletic scene by 1982.  ^[3]  

By 1979, the recreation facility that Emory historian Gary Hauk described as an “airplane hangar from 1948”  ^[4]   was no longer fit for the students and faculty of Emory University (Figure 4). 

Women began demanding more access to athletics and recreational resources, and the University was in a period of expansion under President James T. Laney (whose term was 1977-1993).  Club and Intramural sports expanded in the late 1970s, and in 1980, Women’s Cross Country was added to Emory’s intercollegiate offerings.  ^[5]    A report from APER Consulting Services on the current state of physical education facilities at Emory from September 1979 declared that “no other major and prestigious educational institutional lacks more.”  ^[6]   Thus, the University set out to preserve this reputation as a “prestigious educational institution” and construct a glorious, new, state-of-the-art, recreational facility.

In a message to the Gymnasium Committee Members in 1979, Clyde Partin, the Chairman of the Division of Health, Physical Education Facility and Student Center at Emory, reveals the University’s clear goal to become a major US institution.  The University planning committee was, at the time, addressing the simultaneous need for a student center and a new gymnasium.  Partin opens his “Thoughts on combining the Physical Education facility and Student Center” with the point that “all major universities in the United States have separate facilities, in terms of Physical Education facilities, the Performing Arts and Student Centers.  There is no major institution with a combination of the above.”  ^[7]   This marked a clear turning point in Emory’s campus development, as the University wanted to conform to the precedents set by “major institutions” they sought to compete with.  Rather than select an architectural design team accustomed to constructing gyms or athletic complexes, Emory chose an “international architect,” a man known globally for his innovative designs, novel use of space, and celebrity status as an architect-developer.

Emory University hired John Portman, an architect with celebrity status in Atlanta and famous for his atrium hotels, to design the new athletic complex.  Why did Emory choose an architect experienced with office buildings and hotels but one without any collegiate gym precedents in his portfolio (Figure 5) to create the WoodPEC?

By the time the WoodPEC opened in 1983, John Portman exemplified “international architect.”  He had become a household name in Atlanta through designing and developing Peachtree Center, a downtown revitalization effort, and then continued to grow in notoriety through his creation of the modern atrium hotel type.  As designer and developer of the Hyatt Regency Atlanta in 1967, Portman became the name behind the exciting, air-filled hotel experience that spread later to most major cities in the United States.  In 1980, John Portman became one of the first American architects or developers to work in China and he designed both the Regent and Marina Square hotels in Singapore, which launched his career internationally.  ^[8]  

The combination of John Portman and George W. Woodruff, the donor for the building, was certainly successful at launching Emory’s national status.  At the dedication ceremony on September 14, 1983, the Board of Trustees Chairman Robert Strickland read aloud a personal letter from US President Ronald Reagan to Mr. Woodruff. The President wrote that it was a “special privilege . . . to extend warm congratulations on the dedication of the George W. Woodruff Physical Education Center at Emory University” (Figure 6).  ^[9]  

The original athletic facility, without the arches and red roof, did not have nearly as great a presence on campus as the WoodPEC does today.  In fact, the three-story building had a purposefully low profile and grass roof so that the structure appeared to blend into the hillside, “visually diminishing its necessarily large mass.”  ^[10]    Since the residential-scaled fraternity houses stand in close proximity, the building was designed to appear as “a non-building visually,”  ^[11]   in order to not overtake the surrounding housing (Figure 7).  When designing the facility, Portman was also tasked with preserving the integral pedestrian route between campus buildings.  This took the form of a central axis, what Riani Paolo has described as the “pedestrian spine.”  ^[12]   Main entrances on either side of the building open directly onto the spine and point the visitors directly through to the other side, allowing for complete disengagement with any of the activities within the gym (Figure 8).  Since the building is set into the hill on one side, and the other offers bleacher seating for the adjacent 400-meter track, the majority of the natural light filters through skylights overhead (Figure 9). 

Activity rooms boarder the pedestrian spine and span all three floors.  The walkway itself seems to hover in space due to a lack of attachment to the adjacent walls where there is a two-foot air gap that spans all floors, allowing viewers to peer over the edge and look either up or down into the various spaces (Figure 10).

The longitudinal section drawings of the building are the best way to understand how Portman applied his design principles to the WoodPEC and the intended use of the 187,000 square feet gym space (Figure 11).  ^[13]  

An exposed spiral staircase that winds around the elevator shaft is the center point of the building and functions as a “people scoop.”  ^[14]   This is a term Portman uses to describe spaces he designs to “unfold rather than explode upon you all at once,” transitional zones that allow one to grow accustomed to the new environment.  ^[15]   In the WoodPEC, the open-air stairway slowly reveals each level as the user ascends while also offering glimpses into the previous floors and nearby rooms due to the near-transparency of the railings (Figures 12-14). 

Portman also intended his buildings to provide users with a “basic identity of the structure,”  ^[16]   which he achieves through suspending, elevating, and detaching both structural and decorative concrete masses throughout the interior.  Smooth, unadorned columns transverse the height of the building, window-like cutouts hang down from the skylights and frame the activity spaces on the top floor, and every walkway is held away from the nearby wall (Figure 15). 

Overall, there was a clear focus on movement of people through and within the WoodPEC, and less with the quality of the activity spaces themselves which are all large rectangles, many with no exterior windows. 

In 1987, four years after the building was completed, the Senate Committee on Athletic Policy Chair, James V. McMahon, wrote a letter summarizing the Committee’s end-of-year report.  He noted that the Senate was “particularly concerned about the physical condition of the Woodruff Physical Education Center.”   ^[17]   After outlining the major issues, which included soaking wet carpets in the locker rooms, poor air circulation in the men’s dressing rooms, a leaking roof, peeling paint, and dying landscaping both inside and outside the building, Mr. McMahon was adamant the WoodPEC should “receive more than routine care; it should be maintained as a showcase building.” He continued:

“The reason both the Senate and the Athletic Policy Committee are so concerned about these matters is that the Woodruff P. E. Center has become one of the University’s ‘showcase’ buildings. People visiting the campus, including prospective students and their parents, alumni, guests of the University, and potential benefactors are now routinely brought there to admire the building.  If our showcase buildings are not kept in excellent condition, that contributes to a negative impression of the whole University."

James V. McMahon, Emory University Senate Committee on Athletic Policy Chair, 1987   ^[18]  .

The Woodruff Physical Education Center is no longer one of Emory’s showcase buildings.  In fact, on admissions tours, guides only wave a hand at the WoodPEC on their way to the gleaming new Emory Student Center.  This neglect may be due to the building’s age, because there are newer, more glamourous buildings to showcase, or because the structure looks nothing like the window-walled gyms filled with natural light that college campuses flaunt today.  Yet, within the social context of its creation design, by a nationally prominent architect the WoodPEC continues to hold a uniqueness that transcends its failures as an athletic facility.

Today, the massive, multi-building athletic complexes we have come to expect from universities are designed to meet the needs of the entire campus population.  Yet, when the WoodPEC opened just one year after females were fully integrated into the NCAA, the official organization of college athletics, this was far from the case.  The building was on the cutting edge of a new social age of athletics, one in which athletics was for everyone.  Additionally, the underlying vision for the structure may have been only partially for athletics.  With Portman as the architect and George W. Woodruff as the donor, the WoodPEC generated national prominence for Emory, which motivated further growth and development.  Renovations in 2005 sought to accommodate the WoodPEC to Emory’s growing student population and ameliorate a host of issues with the original structure, but they also diluted the original vision and turned the physical education facility into simply another red-roofed Emory structure.  Portman’s exterior concept and cohesive design for the WoodPEC may no longer exist, but the foundation it created for Emory certainly persists.

Julia Danko graduated Emory with a degree in Engineering Sciences and developed a love for the WoodPec by participating in the Cross Country/Track and Field Teams.

Keywords: Emory WoodPEC, John Portman, Title IX, Athletics, Woodruff

Bell, Richard C. “A History of Women in Sport Prior to Title IX.” The Sport Journal 24 (2007),  https://thesportjournal.org/article/a-history-of-women-in-sport-prior-to-title-ix/ 

Diamond, Fred H. “Mr. George’s Gym Officially Opened.” The Emory Wheel, Sept 20, 1983.

Hauk, Gary, “Emory Historian Guest Lecturer.” Lecture at Emory University, Atlanta, GA, April 1, 2024.

McFadden, Robert. "John Portman, Hyatt Regency." New York Times, December 30, 2017.  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/obituaries/john-portman-dead.html 

NCAA. “Celebrating Women’s History.” Accessed March 8, 2024.  www.ncaa.org/sports/2023/3/27/celebrating-womens-history.aspx. 

Partin, Clyde, and Gary S. Hauk. Athletics for all: A history of health, physical education, athletics, and recreation at Emory University, 1836-2005. Atlanta, GA: Emory University, 2006.

“Groundbreaker.” Portman Archives, www.portmanarchives.com/groundbreaker. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.

Riani, Paolo. John Portman. Milan: L'Arcaedizioni, 1990.

Woodruff Physical Education Center, 1977-1981, 1, Box: 17, Folder: 2. Office of Business Management buildings and facilities files, Series No. 149, Emory University Archives, Atlanta, GA.

Woodruff Physical Education Center, 1982-1987, 1, Box: 17, Folder: 3. Office of Business Management buildings and facilities files, Series No. 149, Emory University Archives, Atlanta, GA.