St. Christopher’s School
Richmond, Virginia

It is obvious that athletics is an important part of student life at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, a private college preparatory school for boys’ founded in 1911.
           
One indication of the significance of sports is the school’s requirement that all boys in grades 9 through 12 must participate in a team sport in each of its three quarters.

The philosophy of the school is to “provide a broad offering of team sports that allows students to experience athletic competition, learn the rewards of commitment, hard work, teamwork and sportsmanship, and acquire sound habits of physical discipline. Every student is expected to participate in organized and supervised athletics.”
           
To help accomplish this mission, St. Christopher’s recently completed a 109,000-square-foot athletic complex that rivals the facilities at many major colleges and universities. The 930 boys at the school have at their disposal both indoor and outdoor tennis courts, a football stadium, and a multi-use field house.
           
The field house is the crown jewel of the school’s athletic complex and the result of a $30-million capital campaign to revamp its athletic facilities.

The new Kemper Athletic and Fitness Center features, according to the school’s Web site, “a large, modern weight room, enabling students to reap the benefits of strength and aerobic training, as well as a climbing wall available to students of all ages, a wellness library and updated facilities for students and visiting teams. The new 53,000-square-foot field house features one of the area’s few indoor tracks as well as indoor tennis and basketball courts.”
           
Stressing the school’s mission to “educate the whole boy in mind, body and sprit,” Ace Ellis, the school’s business administrator, told Inform magazine, the AIA of Virginia’s publication, that he considers the gym “an essential classroom that needs to be safe and functional.”
           
The Kemper facility was built in two phases. The first phase was finished in 2003; the second phase – the indoor athletic facility – was completed in January 2006, and included a six-lane running track, a long jump pit, a shot put area, high jump lane, four basketball courts, four tennis courts, and a baseball batting cage.
           
It was determined that a pre-engineered metal system would be used to build the second  phase, because it offered a 190-foot clear span, which meant there would be no need for support beams inside the structure. The elimination of any poles, posts or other type of support allowed for a clear, “uninterrupted” area under one roof.
           
The building was designed by Bowie, Gridley Architects of Washington, DC.  The metal construction was done by Bass Steel Building Company in Richmond, an independent authorized VP Builder. VP Buildings, one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of metal building systems, supplied the framework and roof.
           
To make room for the facility, the school’s old gym, built in 1936, was demolished. 

Mary Harding Sadler, who writes for Inform magazine, praised the new building, writing, “Handsome bleachers nestle against a long wall between brick cheeks walls with molded brick coping. Like the building it replaced, the new field house is a pre-engineered structure, but its potentially overwhelming girth is skillfully disguised on the exterior with stepped parapets and shallow Doric Arcades that echo the portico (of another building.”
           
Sadler continued, “The floor area of the field house was determined by the need for a 200-meter track surrounding four basketball courts, leaving enough of a buffer to minimize collisions.”
           
Sadler had special praise for the architect.
           
“The genius of this athletic center design is that Bowie Gridley has logically shaped the huge volumes of the program to create a building that enhances and orders the campus,” she wrote. “Rather than overwhelming the smaller nearby buildings, the athletic center deliberately repeats architectural features and materials that characterize the school’s historic core.”

She continued, “To their credit, it is Bowie Gridley’s effective application of good proportions and their creation of graceful symmetries and a bold focal point that have produced a remarkably engaging building that knits itself easily into the village-like campus.”

Based in Memphis, Tennessee, VP Buildings, www.vp.com, engineers and manufactures steel building systems for low-rise commercial applications, including manufacturing, warehouse, school and commercial applications. The company markets its products through a network of more than 1,000 authorized builders.

Fast Facts

School: St. Christopher’s School

Location: Richmond, Virginia

Student Body: 930 boys

Grades Served: 9-12

Project Goal: To build an athletic complex to reflect the school’s high priority on students’ involvement in team sports

Size: 109,000 square feet

Cost: $30 million

Noteworthy: A pre-engineered metal system would be used to build the second phase of the project, because it offered a 190-foot clear span, which meant there would be no need for support beams inside the structure. The elimination of any poles, posts or other type of support allowed for a clear, “uninterrupted” area under one roof.