PHOTO OF THE DAY: OLD SCHOOL
This photo was shared on the Heritage Hall Museum Facebook page last month as part of its weekly look back. The accompanying explanation follows:
This photo from 1965 – looking to the southwest – shows the construction of an addition to the east end of what was, at the time, Freeman Public School Gym. Today the entire facility is the Freeman Community Center at 224 South Wipf. The eastern portion of the addition (seen under construction here) today is home to Forever Fitness. The western portion is the Freeman Community Center Meeting Room.
The gym portion was built in 1956; prior to that the school gym was located in the center of the lower portion of the neighboring three-story classroom building that served grades K-12.
In early 1965, with major overcrowding in the classroom building, voters approved a $75,000 bond issue to build an addition to the gym to house the music and industrial arts programs and add new locker rooms. Construction (pictured here) began that summer; it was completed in early 1966.
The west portion of the addition was used by the music department and the eastern part by the industrial arts department. The small “room” adjacent to the gym is an addition to the backstage area of the gym.
After the new (current) jr.-sr. high school building opened south of College Street in the fall of 1976, which included rooms for music and industrial arts, the addition to the gym was used as the elementary music room and lunchroom. The gym itself remained the school’s sole gym until 1992 when a new (current) gym was added to the jr.-sr. high school.
After the new Freeman Elementary School opened in 2009, the classroom building at Third and Wipf was razed. The school then gifted the entire former school property to the City of Freeman. Thanks to state grants totaling about $488,000, and private fundraising, the city made improvements to convert the gym to a community center. That included installing a geothermal HVAC system. The facility had been heated by the same plant as the classroom building.
These details come from “Freeman Fact, Freeman Fiction” and the Freeman Courier in our archives. We are open during our regular fall/winter hours – noon to 4 weekday afternoons. We are, however, closed on holidays during those months; that includes today, Presidents Day, Monday, Feb 17.
