You might be confused with the "tuned" outdoor track Harvard had that would buckle when it got quite warm outside. The indoor facility, to my knowledge was always made of wood, with wood supports, similar to the Boston U original indoor track and the present track. Going back in time, most of the 11 lap to the mile track early on were made out of Canadian pine, not "oak", as oak would split easily from the spikes used indoors. The old Madison Square Garden track, the Boston track, the Toronto track, The Cleveland track, the Baltimore track and the Philly 12 lap to the mile track were all built that way. Eventually the plywood tracks came about in 70's as well as a synthetic covered track that was used in Madison Square Garden when Martin McGrady set the world 600yd record (I think it was called a Borden track, a forerunner of the polyurethane tracks). That surface was very soft, green and made for slower times than the old wooden surface. My recollection is that it may have been used 1-2 years and then replaced by a pretty plywood track (yellow I think), similar to what was used at the Meadowlands (might have been the same track)and tracks out west (built by the company that built the latest Boston U track, as times were so slow on the Borden track.
The NCAA indoor meet at Cobo Arena was also on an 11 lap to the mile track when Dave Patrick set the 880y record in beating Jim Ryun, after Ryun had won the mile. When that meet was moved to the Joe Louis Arena, I think that track was 200m (I never saw that facility).
There was a track up in Canada, around Windsor, Canada where a meet was held on an old wooden track (Highlander Games, I think) where the boards ran across the track, rather than parallel. This seemed to make the track quite slow, as there was no give or bounce. The old Boston track had two different turns, one tighter than the other. The Cleveland track had carpenters on hand as boards used to break frequently.
The best board runner I ever saw was Larry James, even better than Eamonn Coghlin, in my opinion, since Larry was running around those tight turns a lot faster. Both he and Eamonn worked out on the Villanova 11 lap to the mile track that sat on the Villanova outdoor track during the winter.
It used to be fun watching guys from Texas A&M (Curtis Mills for one) come up to run the 4x440 relay and see them almost run off the bank on each turn as they couldn't handle the turns at all, since they trained outdoors during the winter.