This photograph shows the members of the College Gymnastics Club,
posing in the Old Gymnasium. Students were required to exercise and
in the following year two years of "Physical Culture" were required for
graduation. Fletcher Durell, a professor of mathematics and astronomy
the students called "Flip," took the responsibility of drilling the male
students with indian clubs.
The Gymnasium, situated to the west of the Tome scientific building,
was completed in 1885, at a cost of seventy-five hundred dollars.
Three years later, thanks to a gift from William Clare Allison, the gymnasium
was provided with the best equipment "of invention and mechanical
skill, for giving effect to the suggestions of medical science for securing
harmonious physical development." When the Alumni Gymnasium, now the Weiss
Center, was built in 1931, the space was used as a college common and a
social and banquet hall. In 1953 the building lost one of its walls
in a storm and was taken down, leaving only the heating plant, parts of
which stand to this very day.