Peegs.com & Inside Indiana - In the beginning...

October 11, 2009

Ken Bikoff
Peegs.com & Inside Indiana Editor

Click here to see the full feature layout, complete with photos, that originally ran in Inside Indiana

The Hoosier sports tradition is one of the proudest in the collegiate ranks, and what happens on the field has created memories, joy and sadness for the Indiana faithful over more than a century of action. What happens on the field of play has been great, but the surroundings in which those games are played are as much a part of the experience. Every other week through the 2009-10 school year, we will present the history of the athletic facilities at IU. In the first of our 12-part series, we take a look at the original gymnasium that kick-started the Hoosier athletics tradition.

Tom Crean proudly made his way to the podium with a beaming smile on his face. His sunburned skin shone in the harsh lights of the television cameras, and he couldn't hide his excitement as he faced the assembled media throng in the Hoosier Room under Memorial Stadium. Following some opening remarks, Crean explained why he had decided to leave Marquette, his home for nearly a decade, to come to Bloomington. His answer was simple.

"I thought and I listened and I thought, and I'd still come back to what I thought at the very beginning, if anybody asked me why: It's Indiana."

With those last two words, Crean won over just about every Hoosier fan who was listening. But in that moment, when Crean was basking in the excitement of becoming a part of the Hoosier sports tradition, he couldn't have realized that in some way he had a long-since-vanished wooden building on the other side of campus - one that never hosted varsity sports of any kind - to thank.

In fact, not many people know the story you're about to read, but it is crucial to building the brand name of "Indiana" in the college sports world.

The year was 1889. Sometime in the spring of that year, Dr. James D. Maxwell, an 1833 graduate of IU who had recently retired to give his full attention to his long-time duty as a trustee at Indiana University, decided to contact some colleagues about the practicality of building a gymnasium on the IU campus.

On May 18, Maxwell sent a letter to Dudley Allen Sargent of Harvard College, one of the leaders of the physical fitness movement in America and later the founder of the Sargent Normal School of Physical Training. Sargent responded to Maxwell on May 22 with the following letter:

Dear Sir:
Your letter of May 18th is at hand. I send you by the same that takes this letter a copy of the reformed Physical Training that was (approved) by the Bureau of Education at Washington two or three years since. It contains more general information on the subject of gymnasiums than I could possibly give you in any other enumeration.

I send you enclosed a rough sketch of the best plan of building a large, serviceable, yet cheaply constructed gymnasium. Such a building with a basement, bathing facilities, dressing room lockers and equipment for gymnasium could be made for $15,000 of brick. I'd argue to be made for less, if constructed wholly of wood. Fifteen hundred dollars would secure you a first-class equipment for such a gymnasium. Perhaps a similar structure to the one I have drafted might be made. The principle think is to keep to the regulation heath for the cross beams (20 to 22 feet) and 12 ft. for the height under the running track, with 10 or 12 ft. for the basement. If you could build up the roof as indicated by the dotted lines, it would offer you better light and air, and consequently better ventilation.

If you could have the bath rooms and dressing locker arranged in your basement as indicated in the plans for Lehigh University, it would be an economical one, though it would be better in many respects in sections. There is an increasing tendency to do away with the tub bath in the gymnasium, and confine the bathing to showers and sponge baths. This necessitates a room (12 X 12) so constructed that water will do no damage and drain off rapidly after it has been used. Do not have any plaster in the gymnasium. Have as much light and air as you can get and let it come from above. If I can give you any further information please let me hear from you.

Very truly yours, D.A. Sargent

(The drawing Sargent referenced can be seen by downloading the PDF.)

Shortly after receiving Sargent's letter, Maxwell contacted William Gay Ballantine, a former Greek professor at IU and a professor of Greek at Oberlin College in Ohio, about the gym. William was the son of Elisha Ballantine, a professor at IU and one-time vice-president of Indiana University who would go on to have a building named after him on campus.

Ballantine forwarded Maxwell's letter to F.F. Jewett, a chemistry teacher at Oberlin and a member of the advisory committee for the Oberlin Board of Trustees. Jewett would mentor a student named Charles Martin Hall, who would go on to perfect a process for extracting aluminum for commercial use and later become the vice-president of the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa). Hall's process eventually would lead to the widespread use of aluminum alloys, which is presently used to construct stadium seating... but we're getting off track.

On June 1, Jewett answered Maxwell's questions about the gymnasium with the following letter:

Dear Sir,
Your letter of May 31st to Prof. Ballantine was handed to me as chairman of the gymnasium committee for reply. We have connected with the college two gymnasiums, one for the young men and one for the ladies, both of which are tolerably well equipped with apparatus. Our young men's gymnasium is a wooden structure, one story high without basement and heated by two stoves. I do not remember the size exactly but I would think it must be 75 by 35 or 40 feet. One end of it is partitioned off for a dressing room, provided with rows of lockers two high for holding the clothing of the students.

Each locker has a lock and key, so that each student can keep his things safely. The main room will accommodate on the floor about thirty-five students., not more than that conveniently. We have dumb bells, Indian clubs, and such apparatus sufficient for that number of students, but of chest weights about twelve.

Our young man has charge of the whole. He had special training in gymnastics having studied under Dr. Luther H. Gulick who has charge of the Gymnastic Department of the YMCA Training School for Christian Workers at Springfield, Mass. He teaches one or two classes a day himself and then has students who he has trained take charge of the other classes. There are seven classes, not organized according to proficiency but according to the time they can best devote to physical practice. The members of our preparatory dept. are all obliged to attend daily, but with the college students, it is optional whether they go or not. If our building was large enough to accommodate classes of twice the size, we should require attendance from all. The building did not cost over $2,000, and the apparatus in it I should think could be purchased for four or five hundred. I should have said in regard to the director of the gymnasium that the college pays him $35 a month, and the other teachers (students) fifteen cents an hour.

(Fun facts: Jewett mentions that they have a young man in charge of physical education who studied under Dr. Luther H. Gulick at the YMCA in Springfield, Mass. Gulick previously studied physical education under Sargent and would later become the head of physical education at the Springfield YMCA. It was Gulick who, in 1891, ordered one of his instructors, James Naismith, to come up with a game that would not take up much room and help the men stay in shape during the long New England winter. Naismith, of course, came up with a game called "basket-ball," which people from Indiana would come to enjoy tremendously.)

Despite all of Maxwell's legwork on the gym, the University didn't act on constructing a gym right away. Two full years later, IU still didn't have a gymnasium.

But that was about to change.

During a Nov. 7, 1891 meeting of the IU Board of Trustees, the following motion was passed authorizing the construction of a gymnasium on campus.

"On the motion of Mr. Youche, the Local Executive Committee and with the concurrence of the President of the University, we're authorized and directed to construct and equip on the campus a gymnasium for the use of young men at a cost not to exceed $1,000.00 which sum was ordered appropriated out of the contingent fund of the university."

The public was notified three days later. Wedged between a note that "Miss Fan Watson has been enjoying a very pleasant visit for the last three days from her sister," and an item reporting that the IU football team had lost a practice game to Butler 28-6, the Nov. 10, 1891 Bloomington Telephone printed the de facto birth announcement of the arrival of Hoosier athletics.

"It will be noted in the report of the meeting of the Board of Trustees that the I.U. is to have a regular gymnasium," the paper reported. "It will be a frame structure, located north of Owen Hall, and will be so constructed that it can be improved upon as fast as the means are provided. Work will begin as soon as practicable. Athletics are certainly on the rise at I.U."

Although the Hoosier baseball and football teams had been around for a while - both teams played at the southwest corner of the nearby Seminary Square campus, which is currently bounded by W. Second Street to the north and wedged between College and Walnut Streets - there had never been a dedicated athletic facility on the main campus at IU. The gymnasium was built 71 feet north and four feet east of the west edge of Owen Hall. The building was designed to accommodate additions, including a running track and bathing facilities. Once construction began, the work moved quickly.

In the Dec. 8, 1891 edition of the Telephone, it was reported, "The gymnasium will be a frame structure 50 feet wide, 66-feet long and with 18 feet ceiling. Work is progressing rapidly, and as there is no plastering to be done, the building can be finished without delay."

Just over a month later, the Telephone announced that, "the gymnasium building is about completed and will soon be ready for the apparatus. As there is only a small amount [of money] left for equipment, the apparatus will not be very extensive at first but will be ample for our present needs. Additions will be made as needed."

On Jan. 22, 1892, the gymnasium was dedicated during IU's 72nd Foundation Day festivities. At 2 p.m., the public was invited to see the new facility. Following a short address by a Prof. Haffcut, the master of ceremonies for the day, a display of gymnastic exercises were performed by the ladies' gymnastic drill, led by Mrs. Harriet Colburn Sanderson. The ladies marched, performed "Swedish exercises" and worked with "chest weights." The men's gymnastic exercises were omitted because the apparatus had not yet arrived, but the Telephone reported that "the performers gave evidence of excellent training."

The University imposed a $1 fee per term on students for using the gymnasium. The fee was justified by two reasons. The Telephone reported that "those who are not in earnest will not care to throw away the dollar for nothing, and this will keep a great many stragglers out of the way of the others who mean business." Secondly, the money would be used to buy new apparatus and equipment for the gymnasium.

The gym was a hit. By mid-February, the apparatus for the building had arrived, and more than 50 students - at a time when roughly 500 students were enrolled on campus - were taking part in training. Gymnastics became one of the most popular classes on campus with practice running from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. and classes being taught from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. The football and baseball teams used the facility, as well, and students could make use of the horizontal bars, parallel bars, Indian clubs, chest weights, ladders and vaulting bars as long as they had paid their $1 and had a pair of "solid rubber shoes."

By December of 1892 the Trustees approved another $150 for apparatus for the gym, and a 12-foot by 30-foot dressing/locker room was approved. The addition was finished by January, 1893, and that month's edition of The Indiana Student reported that, "A great deal of new apparatus has been added to the gymnasium."

The facility was undoubtedly popular, but the facility's small size - it was more like a barn than anything else - quickly became a problem on a growing campus. In fact, less than a year after the gymnasium opened, it was hinted that the school may have to go another direction. The Dec. 16, 1892 Telephone said the University had delivered its biennial report and although the news was encouraging, it was clear that IU had to expand. The number of graduates for 1892 numbered 77, and in the previous four years attendance had doubled. With that in mind, it was suggested that more construction would be in the offing.

"The library building, which was erected a few months ago, has had to be utilized as a class-room," IU's report said. "The school has no assembly room where the students can meet as a body."

With that sentence the seed of an idea for the construction of some sort of assembly hall was planted, and it would blossom into something special in 1896.

The gymnasium served its purpose as an athletic facility for four years, but in 1896 the athletic equipment was moved out and it took on its new role, that of Carpenter's Shop. The building helped with the construction of other facilities on campus, be it athletic or otherwise, for the next 36 years. In 1905 an addition 40-feet long by 12-feet wide and costing $150 was made to the building for the storage of feed for the campus horses, and room was added for machinery. Five years later a stable 19 feet long and 16 feet wide was added to the building for $75.

The building was razed without fanfare in 1932 to allow room for a road to pass between Owen Hall and the newly constructed Indiana Memorial Union. There is no marker to commemorate IU's original gymnasium, and for decades students have walked or driven through the spot that once focused Hoosiers on the importance of athletics. For the final 36 years of its existence, the gymnasium stood in the shadow of its successor, but that's a story for a different time.

Ken Bikoff can be reached via e-mail at kbikoff@insideiu.com. To subscribe to Inside Indiana, call 800.282.GOIU!

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