School for Christian Workers Gymnasium, c. 1894

An image of the gymnasium from the School for Christian Worker's, now Springfield College, building on the corner of State and Sherman Streets in Springfield, Massachusetts. The image is from a pamphlet published by the Armory Hill YMCA entitled "Compliments of a Ten Year Old Boy." The pamphlet was published c. 1894 to promote the Armory Hill YMCA. This is the gymnasium in which basketball was invented by James Naismith in 1891.In 1890 the School for Christian Workers separated into two schools which continued to operate out of the same building, the YMCA Training School and the School for Christian Workers. In 1896 the Training School finished the transition to its new location on Alden Street and in 1897 the School for Christian Workers became the Bible Normal College and moved to Hartford, Connecticut. The Armory Hill YMCA also rented rooms in this building. The original building was torn down in 1965 to create a parking lot. In 1995, McDonald's Corporation bought the land, excavating the original foundation and bricks before building a restaurant on the site. Today, there is a monument commemorating the site as the birthplace of basketball.The scrapbook pages that this document is in have not been digitized. Since it has not been digitized, the exact order and number of the items has not been determined. Therefore the item number of "003" is temporary and may change. Exact location is loose between the first and second pages of the scrapbook. It is the third object represented on these pages.