Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 01:11:00

The climactic game of Hoosiers was filmed here - on the same floor where the real Milan Miracle happened in 1954. Hinkle Fieldhouse, at 510 West 49th Street on the Butler University campus in Indianapolis, is Indiana's Basketball Cathedral: the nation's oldest major college basketball arena, opened in March 1928 and still the home of Butler Bulldogs basketball and volleyball. Built as Butler Fieldhouse by a consortium of 41 Indianapolis businessmen and designed by Fermor Spencer Cannon, its 15,000 seats made it the largest basketball arena in America for its first 22 years, its steel-truss roof giving every seat an unobstructed view - an innovation that shaped arena design nationwide. It was renamed in 1966 for Tony Hinkle, the coach and athletic director who served Butler for nearly half a century and who gave basketball its orange ball. The history compounds: the Indiana high school finals lived here from 1928, hosting Milan's 1954 miracle and Crispus Attucks' barrier-breaking 1955 title behind Oscar Robertson; John Wooden played state finals on the floor; presidents from Hoover to Ford and evangelist Billy Graham spoke under the trusses; and the building served the Army Air Corps in wartime. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1987. Modern Butler gave the shrine new chapters - the 2010 and 2011 Final Four runs made Hinkle's underdog mythology national again - and a 36-million-dollar renovation completed in 2014 rebuilt systems and seating while preserving the brick, steel and light that make the room unmistakable. Capacity now stands at about 9,100. Practical notes: the fieldhouse anchors the leafy Butler campus six miles north of downtown, with game-day parking in campus garages and lots. Public areas display the building's museum-grade history - worth arriving early for, in the one arena where the word cathedral is not a metaphor.