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Gould Academy –
William Bingham Gym – 1921 November 16, 2009 |
Plans
for New Gymnasium – to be Funded by William Bingham II
On
May 7 1921 the Lewiston Journal and on May 12 The Oxford County Citizen printed
this special news announcement by Gould Academy Principal, Frank E. Hanscom.
New Gym
Ground will be broken within one week and
the work will go forward to completion in time for the opening of the new
school year of a new gymnasium for Gould’s Academy. The building will be of
brick, 50 by 80 feet. The basement will contain a central hating plant to heat
all the buildings on the campus, - dressing rooms for the athletic teams, both
booths and girls, with showers, lockers, etc. A separate dressing room with
showers, lavatories, etc, will be provided for visiting teams.
Home Ec.
The ground floor
will contain the gymnasium proper, with stage and dressing rooms for same; also
director’s and apparatus rooms. A balcony will surround the room on three
sides, thus giving a seating capacity of seven hundred, when the room is used
as an auditorium.
Main Bldg
Plans and
specifications were drawn by Coolidge & Carlson, the well known architects
of Boston, who will supervise the work of construction. (See Note 1) It is
their assertion that no better gymnasium will be found in any secondary school
in New England.
1924 Map of Gould Campus – does not show Holden dorm
In addition to the
gym other important improvements will be made on the campus during the summer
vacation. The Domestic Arts cottage will be enlarged to give added room for the
cooking laboratory and two or three rooms for girls will be added, this
enabling a group of eight or ten girls to live in the cottage at one time.
The
manual training building will be completed and equipped in the best possible
manner. This building will contain machine shop and garage in basement, wood
working shops on ground floor and finishing and storage rooms on the second
floor.
The
Academy building will also be improved by the addition of a new colonial
entrance, new and enlarged recitation rooms and the installation of an
up-to-date heating and ventilating system.
There
was much celebrating by the Gould’s student body upon hearing Mr. Hanscom’s
announcement. The principal also announced that it was not the purpose of those
who have the school in charge to build up a large school, but to evolve a
school that shall stand second to non in ideals and in scholastic standards, to
this end, only those who can furnish the best of references as to character and
fitness will be admitted.
“That
Gould’s Academy has entered upon the best decade in her long and honorable
history there can be little doubt, and Principal Frank E. Hanscom, who for
twenty-four years has worked unceasingly for the upbuilding of the school, is
to be congratulated on the growth and progress which the school has made.
During his administration, he has seen the attendance twice doubled, the
buildings increased and strengthened, the curriculum broadened and diversified,
and from an almost total lack of endowment has arisen a financial backing to
make the future of the school secure for all times.”
The
academy news ended with this communication that the academy had recently
received:
“The
following tribute was recently paid to Gould’s Academy by the president of one
of our Maine colleges:”
“Gould’s
Academy has been for nearly a century one of the most useful secondary schools
in Maine; nor has it ever been more useful than at the present time. It is the
only school that can meet the needs of pupils of small means in one of the most
interesting parts of our State. The boys and girls that attend Gould’s Academy
are of good stock, and this institution, with its inspiring history and
traditions, with its rare environment of noble hills and beautiful valleys, and
with its earnest, scholarly and sympathetic teachers, is yielding a fruitage of
popular intelligence, thrifty habits and good citizenship not surpassed by any
school of its grade in our country.”
Map
shown above was created by Sanborn Maps; it is dated September 1924, Bethel,
Me. At that time, the street known as Elm Street in 2009 was called Summer
Street and intersected High Street.
William
Bingham Gymnasium, 1953
The
Gould Academy Herald
In the announcement about
plans for the new building, Mr. Hanscom used the words “those who have the
school in charge”. In 1921 the officers
of the academy’s board of trustees included:
Dr. John G. Gehring, President; Daniel S. Hastings, Vice President;
Ellery C. Park, Secretary; Ernest M. Walker, Treasurer; and Fred B. Merrill,
Auditor.
Note
1:
Besides supporting Gould’s Academy in the
1920’s William Bingham II also contributed to other major athletic facilities
engineered to include facilities for women.
For instance he contributed funds for the Gray Athletic Building in 1927
and a women’s locker building or gym at Bates College. During these years he also bought the Barker
Mountain-Chapman Brook watershed in an effort to protect Bethel’s public water
supply. The watershed continued to supply safe water for Bethel until July 2007
when a very severe thunder storm damaged the watershed site to the point that
it was not feasibly repairable.
During
the 1920’s and later, it seems safe to assume that William Bingham collaborated
with or at least consulted his sister, Frances Payne Bingham Bolton, or she did
with him, who had become very interested in women’s health and physical
fitness. For instance, circa 1920, the
American College for Girls, Istanbul : William Bingham II,
became a trustee of the college, and
contributed $100,000 for the establishment of a School of Medicine at the
college in memory of his mother, Mary Payne Bingham.
From
the history of campus buildings at Bates College, this information has been
discovered.
This
indoor athletic building was made possible by Mr. William Bingham II of Bethel,
who gave $150,000 for its erection. He requested that it be named
in honor of President Clifton Daggett Gray. The first of four units of a
planned Physical Education plant, the cornerstone was laid on Dec. 14, 1925;
the building was completed in 1927.
Designed
by Coolidge and Carlson of Boston
(the same architects who designed the Bingham Gym at Gould’s), the athletic
building was to be used not only for intercollegiate sports but was also to be part
of the college’s health program; women were to have equal access to it.
Plans for new athletic facilities were drawn up in 1922 but the need became
more urgent when the old gymnasium mysteriously burned in June of 1925.
This first unit, the indoor athletic building, was to be a supplement to a
gymnasium, not a replacement for it.
The
Gray Athletic Building featured an indoor field large enough to contain a
baseball diamond excluding the outfield, a ten lap cinder-dirt track with
banked corners and a wooden track at the mezzanine level which also could serve
as a gallery. (This type of facility was copied when Mr. Bingham donated funds
for building a similar athletic building at Gould Academy ten years later.
Also
built at this time was the Men’s Locker Building, which may also have been
financed by Mr. Bingham. It housed a corrective gym, squash and handball
courts, lockers, dressing rooms, offices and a medical examination room.
The handball and squash courts became coeducational in 1971.
The
Gray Athletic Building, which became known as the “Cage,” hosted many rallies
and field events over the years. Musical events were staged there and luncheons
were held during reunion and parents’ weekends; it became coeducational in
1973. With the opening of Merrill Gymnasium in the fall of 1980, track
events were moved to that location. The Cage continued to be used as a
practice site for spring teams and as a competition area for track and field
throwing events.
The
building that eventually became the Muskie Archives was originally the Women’s
Locker Building, also known as the Campus Ave. Gymnasium. Mr. William Bingham II of
Bethel, who gave the money for the Gray Athletic Building, wanted the women to
have equal access to it. He donated an additional $35,000 for this
purpose. Built at the same time as the athletic building, it was
connected to it by a long corridor. The first floor featured showers,
which could internally control the water temperature from hot to cold, lockers,
dressing rooms, offices and a medical examination room. The second floor
housed a gymnasium, which could be used for corrective work, drills, and both
interpretive and folk dancing.
Sources:
The Oxford County
Citizen
The Bethel Historical
Society
Google Books
History of Bates
Campus Buildings online
The Bethel Journals
Donald
G Bennett
PO
Box 763
Bethel,
Maine 04217
Donald@thebetheljournals.info