Letter from Richard C. Morse to J. T. Bowne (January 11, 1886)
Description:
This is a two-page handwritten letter from Richard C. Morse to Jacob T. Bowne. The letter is dated January 11, 1886 and concerns donations from Vanderbilt for furnishing rooms in the School for Christian Workers. The Vanderbilt mentioned may have been a member of the Cornelius Vanderbilt family, given that there was a desire to ask for a larger sum and the Vanderbilt's were known to support the YMCA. The building has been known by many different names over the years including the Winchester Square Building, the Mason Square building and the Armory Hill building. Construction on the building was completed in the spring of 1886 and it was dedicated on June 1 of that year. The building consisted of a reading room, gymnasium, parlor, a recitation room, an amusement room and fifty sleeping rooms. The Armory Hill YMCA also rented rooms in the building. In 1891 James Naismith, while a faculty member at the school, invented the game of basketball in the gymnasium of the building. 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, now Springfield College, 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 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.
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