The campus of the University of Arizona with the football field directly west of Bear Down Gym. On February 14, 1929, a photographer took aerial pictures of the Tucson area, including the U of A.

 Arizona Daily Star file

On Wednesday, the 50th anniversary of Arizona’s last basketball game at Bear Down Gym, I walked through the front door and was greeted by a nurse.

“Are you here to get a COVID vaccine?” she asked.

The site where Arizona once won 81 consecutive games has been repurposed. You can buy a cup of coffee and a donut at a quick-serve market where the office of coaches Fred Enke and Fred Snowden used to be.

You can study for an exam in the “Think Tank,” nap in a comfortable chair, take a cooking class or consult with a nutritional coach at what is now called the Bear Down Building.

But you can’t play basketball.

Two glass backboards with rims and nets hang 10 feet from the ground, but they are ornamental, not to be used for a 3-point jumper or an intramural game.

Time has touched every aspect of the one-time state-of-the-art gymnasium, built in 1926 for a then-hefty $166,207.

In the early spring of 1926 the metal framework for the new men’s gymnasium (Bear Down Gym) at the University of Arizona is beginning to take shape.

Fifty years ago, on Jan. 18, 1973, Snowden’s first Arizona team beat UC-Santa Barbara in a farewell-to-Bear Down Gym game. One columnist referred to the venue as “once elegant, now a relic.” It was the last of 488 UA games played at Bear Down Gym.

It was forgotten almost overnight.

Jerry Holmes, who was Snowden’s lead assistant coach, remembers the seven games Arizona played at Bear Down Gym in the 1972-73 season, but not necessarily fondly.

“Oh my god, it was so small,” Holmes says now. “It seated about 3,000, and half of those were for students. I think we must’ve had 500 students turned away every game. It was a wild environment — intimidating — but we weren’t thinking about the history of the gym; we were too excited to get into McKale.”

By 1973, the history of the gym had long been classified as old news. Tucson was eager to make its tardy entrance in the Western Athletic Conference’s first true facilities “arms race.” What was once the premier basketball facility in the Southwest was over the hill by age 30.

“The grand old dame’s days as a queen of high society are long past,” the Tucson Citizen wrote in 1973. “Now it’s a doddering old dowager.”

Some referred to it as “Tear Down Gym.”

The Star reported that Bear Down Gym prevented the UA from being a competitive basketball force. “It has drained Arizona,” it wrote. “The school is now so weak it cannot field a presentable team.”

The UA’s competitors in the WAC didn’t have any pity for the slow-moving UA athletic department. The arms race was full-on:

Colorado State opened Moby Arena in 1966, seating 8,700.

New Mexico debuted the 14,000-seat “The Pit in 1966.

Utah completed the 15,000-seat Huntsman Center in 1969.

BYU opened the doors to its 21,000-seat Marriott Center in 1971.

Former UA basketball coach Fred A. Enke at Bear Down Gym, around 1960, with assistant Bruce Larson, who succeeded Enke, sitting to his right. Enke achieved great success at the old gymnasium, which ceased hosting Wildcat hoops in 1973.

The final decade at Bear Down Gym all but erased memories of Enke’s teams of 1945-51, a golden era in which the Wildcats went 132-40, played in their first NCAA Tournament and began to play a coast-to-coast national schedule.

When Dick Clausen was hired as Arizona’s athletic director in 1958, one of his first stated goals was to replace Bear Down Gym. In a 1998 interview at his midtown Tucson home, Clausen told me that departing Bear Down Gym met opposition at every turn.

Clausen estimated that the UA’s gate receipts for a typical 1960s season at Bear Down Gym were a thin $25,000. He accurately estimated that McKale Center’s income would exceed that by 10 times, more than $300,000 per season in the early ‘70s.

Yet progress was clogged by political opposition and financial issues.

“I was the AD for 13 years, and it took 14 to get McKale Center built,” Clausen told me. “The state legislature, especially the Phoenix group, wouldn’t budge. But when (former UA vice president) Swede Johnson and I proposed it would be named after Pop McKale, it changed everything. We got the fans on our side, and it moved the legislature to take action.”

The price for Arizona’s long delay was staggering. From 1955-72, Arizona had just four winning seasons. Utah, BYU and New Mexico ruled WAC basketball.

On the day of the last game at Bear Down Gym 50 years ago, no one could have guessed or dreamed that Arizona would become the No. 1 college basketball program West of the Kansas Jayhawks.

“We couldn’t have recruited the Eric Moneys and Coniel Normans and Bob Elliotts without having McKale,” Holmes says now. “But it was sad to see what Bear Down Gym had become.”

The facility formerly known as Bear Down Gym still features a hardwood floor and some of the original bleacher seats, but it has been rebranded and repurposed as the Bear Down Building as part of the UA’s ‘Student Success District.’

Now, 50 years from the last game played at Bear Down, it’s possible to put the positives of the old arena in perspective.

Thirteen athletes who played their entire basketball careers at Bear Down Gym — Warren Rustand, Ed Nymeyer, Ernie McCray, Roger Johnson, Fred W. Enke, Hank Leiber, Linc Richmond, Joe Skaisgir, Mo Udall, Waldo Dicus, Leon Blevins, Hadie Redd and George Genung — have been inducted into the UA Sports Hall of Fame.

The street in front of McKale Center is appropriately named Fred Enke Drive. And rather than tear down the old gym, the UA spent more than $25 million to revive it and make it useful. Today the school refers to it as part of the “Student Success District.”

Just like the day in 1951 when the Wildcats beat No. 2 LIU, rose to No. 11 in the AP poll and provided the first glimpse of Tucson as a basketball town.

With students back at UA for the fall semester, here's a look at the Tucson campus over the years compared to now.

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Contact sports columnist Greg Hansen at GHansenAZStar@gmail.com. On Twitter: @ghansen711