Fire destroys historic gym, burns hole in small Indiana community

SPRINGVILLE, Ind. — It wasn’t the biggest high school gym in Indiana. It wasn’t the most well-known, either. But the Springville gym, built from Southern Indiana field stone, has been the heart of this tiny community for years.

It was more than a gym. It was a community center. A wedding hall. A home for Cub Scout Pack 343. It was booked for family reunions and class reunions. There was a wedding reception there just last weekend and another planned for this weekend.

Any plans for future use are on hold, however, after a fire ravaged the 1936 gym in the early morning hours Tuesday. Debris from the caved-in roof still smoldered on the former basketball court Tuesday afternoon as residents – many second-, third- or fourth-generation natives of the Lawrence County community south of Bloomington – gathered outside to mourn the destruction of a small piece of Hoosier hardwood history.

It remains undetermined what started the blaze, which apparently began just before 1 a.m. on Tuesday. Jackie Thompson, a Springville native and resident, was among those who gathered outside the gym and watched as volunteer firefighters finally extinguished the fire several hours later.

Thompson and others were still fighting back tears Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s everything,” said Tammy Holland, who attended elementary school at Springville. “It’s my whole family heritage. I remember walking down the road to go to gym class here. It’s hard. Really hard. It’s sad.”

In the immediate aftermath of the fire, it is unclear whether the gym can be salvaged at all. There are perceptible cracks in some areas of the rock walls, although all four sides remained upright. The roof’s beams crashed to the concrete floor and the six rows of wood bleachers on the north side of the gym were burned. Tiny pieces of the glass windows were found several yards from the building.

“This brought tears to a lot of eyes,” said Bob Phillips, a Perry Township trustee and Springville native and resident. “Including mine. It’s heartbreaking. There was a lot of work put into this gym from a lot of people.”

That was true from the beginning. The first Springville teams, in the 1910s, practiced and played some games outdoors. When the “court” became too muddy, players hauled in sawdust.

On June 16, 1936, construction began on what would become the home of the Springville Hornets. The gym, which sat directly west of a three-story school, was funded largely by the government as a Works Progress Administration project, as many were in the state at the time.

From the Springville Buzzer, the school newspaper, in November 1937: “Springville has every reason to be proud of its new gymnasium, and one of those reasons is the whole-hearted cooperation of all those who shared in its inception and building.”

Jack Armstrong, among those who gathered outside the gym on Tuesday, has a photo of himself – at age 5 – helping his father load field stone near Trinity Springs in Martin County that would later become part of the gym. With graduating classes normally ranging from 12-15 students, the gym had a short run for high school basketball. Springville, 20 miles south of Bloomington, was home to fewer than 5,000 people in 2014. In 1942, its high school was consolidated into Oolitic.

“I remember playing basketball here in junior high,” Armstrong said. “I wasn’t a star, but there was a time that I was the tallest one in the school.”

A new grade school was built in 1964, two blocks from the gym, and the old one was later demolished. But the students continued to use the gym for physical education classes and other uses. In 1998, the gym received something of a second life when the community used a grant and donated money to revitalize the gym and build a park across the street.

Dennis Godsey, the Perry Township fire department captain, has been instrumental in caring for the Springville gym. Godsey told some of those gathered outside the gym Tuesday that he plans to start a committee to rebuild.

“That’s on the assumption that the concrete floor is still good,” Phillips said. “I think it will be. But it’s hard to tell at this point. It might be cost-prohibitive to tear it down. Some of the walls are in pretty bad shape. You can see some areas where the rock got so hot that it just crumbled off the top of the wall.”

While the future of the Springville gym is unclear, there is little doubt how much the building still means to the community. Nearly every community event was centered at the gym. Holland, who moved back to her childhood family farm just outside Springville with her family two years ago, burst into tears as she approached the gym Tuesday.

“If it’s not rebuilt in some way, we are going to lose that close-knit connection,” Holland said. “It’s devastating to see it. You just took the heart right out of Springville. This was the vital, beating heart of Springville.”

Call IndyStar reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.

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