📍Overbrook, West Philadelphia, PA 19151, USA
1936 – 1955“I was born in Philadelphia in August 1936, one of nine surviving children of William Chamberlain, a welder and handyman, and Olivia, a domestic worker. We lived in a modest row house in West Philadelphia, near the Haddington and Overbrook neighbourhoods, a mixed area of working families. I was a frail child at first; I nearly died of pneumonia and missed a whole year of school. But I grew fast, and by the time I was ten I was already six feet tall. At first I thought basketball was a game for sissies, and my real love was track and field. I ran, jumped and threw everything: I high-jumped six feet six, ran the quarter-mile in 49 seconds and put the shot more than fifty feet. But in Philadelphia basketball was king, and I played my first organised game in seventh grade. At Overbrook High School I grew to nearly seven feet, led the team to two city championships and broke the city's high school scoring record, scoring ninety points in one game. In the summers I worked as a bellhop at Kutsher's, a resort in the Catskill Mountains, where I sometimes handed guests their luggage through second-floor windows while standing on the ground. After Overbrook I went to the University of Kansas, and then, in 1959, to the NBA with my hometown Philadelphia Warriors. In 1962 I scored a hundred points in a single game, a record no one has ever matched. Overbrook has retired my number, and Philadelphia always claimed me as its own.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today