Hi Blake,
I came across a ticket for a 1956 Fats Domino concert at the Loyola Field House. Where was it and who were some of the other artists who played there?
Dear reader,
The Loyola Field House, located on the Uptown campus of Loyola University, has hosted concerts, special events, and college and professional basketball games for more than 20 years.
Opened in 1954, the Field House stood on Freret Street, where the Loyola University sports complex now stands. The 6,500-seat hall cost $750,000 to build, according to Loyola historian Bernard Cook.
It hosted its first Loyola Wolfpack basketball game in December 1954 when Loyola faced off against LaSalle College in Philadelphia. The game was notable in that it was open to both white and black players and fans. This followed a policy of Father W. Patrick Donnelly, president of Loyola University, that the Field House would not have separate headquarters or facilities. As a result, Cook notes, segregationists in the state legislature passed a 1956 bill banning interracial college athletic competitions. Loyola and other institutions followed state law until federal civil rights laws were enacted.
The Field House featured prep and college basketball games throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Future NBA legend Bill Russell visited the Field House with the University of San Francisco Dons when they played the Wolfpack in December 1955.
From 1967 to 1970, the New Orleans Buccaneers, the franchise of the American Basketball Association, played their games at Field House. In the 1970s, Pistol Pete Maravich and the New Orleans Jazz played one season at Loyola (and the Municipal Auditorium), before the NBA team moved its home games to the Superdome in 1975.
The Field House also hosted Loyola’s opening ceremonies, campus masses, and other school events.
Besides Fats Domino and Little Richard, music greats who have played there include Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Johnny Mathis, Ray Charles, Liberace, the Carpenters, Peter, Paul and Mary, Neil Diamond, Dionne Warwick and Simon and Garfunkel. It was also a venue for speeches by Jane Fonda, Ralph Nader and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.
In 1975, the Loyola Field House was demolished, three years after Loyola ended its intercollegiate athletic programs (before they returned in 1991). A sports complex and car park were built on the site and inaugurated in 1987.
The stadium at Tulane and South Carrollton Avenues opened in 1915 and has hosted minor and major league baseball.
