Proving ground The humble beginnings of the Ricketts Center

POTTSTOWN >> The Ricketts Center at 658 Beech St. in Pottstown is housed in a 48-year-old red brick building that gracefully follows the contour of a small hill, sloping westward toward the intersection with Adams Street.

Officially named the Pottstown Community Center when it was dedicated Nov. 20, 1971, it replaced the Bethany Center, a building that stood on the same ground for a century before its replacement.

Prior to the building’s dedication, Pottstown Borough Council announced the new building would be called the Pottstown Community Center. Nobody knows when its name was changed to Ricketts Center, but Vince Artist has award certificates he received from the “Ricketts Center” that date back to the 1970s.

The building that housed the Bethany Center was originally a chapel built on property owned by The Hill School, the well-known preparatory school that has been a part of the Pottstown community since its founding in 1851. The driving force behind its construction most likely was Marion Butler Meigs, the wife of John Meigs, The Hill’s Headmaster.

At this point, almost 150 years after its opening, we don’t know exactly what Bethany’s function was at its beginning, but later it was used as a non-denominational chapel for the surrounding community. Old Pottstown newspapers offer occasional glimpses of what happened there. In June of 1895 there was a Children’s Day celebration at which Pottstown youngsters recited Bible verses.

By 1918 a gymnasium was added to the building and it’s clear that Bethany was already in use as a neighborhood center. Hill students were assigned to teach Sunday school classes and wives of Hill School faculty members taught classes such as sewing and worked with neighborhood children. One wife remembered with amusement taking charge of activities for young children.

On Sept. 27, 1937, during the Great Depression, Bethany Chapel officially became a community center. The Mercury reported that J. Theodore Hall, with the impressive title of chairman of the WPA education and recreation center in Pottstown, announced that registration for Pottstown children was planned. The article went on to inform readers that “The opening of the center recently was announced by the chairman of the CharacterBuilding Division of the Council of Social Agencies.”

The year 1937 also saw the beginning of the Girls Scouts in Pottstown as the first group sponsored by The Hill School and taught by wives of Hill faculty opened at the Bethany Chapel.

Bethany also provided recreation for adults and bingo at Bethany seemed to be very popular. A bingo night held in August of 1938 advertised 100 games for 40-cents, with prizes including 10 live chickens.

Four years later, in 1942, The Hill School offered the ownership of Bethany Chapel to the Pottstown Borough, presumably for use as a recreation center. Pottstown had a recreation department at the time, but there was some dithering among Borough Council members about maintenance costs and the fact that ownership brought with it a $500,000 debt on the property.

These obstacles were overcome when the Spicer Corporation, a Pottstown industry, donated the $500,000, and on Feb. 8, 1943, before a large crowd in the Pottstown High School auditorium, a representative of The Hill School officially conveyed the ownership of Bethany Chapel to Pottstown Burgess Lewis P. Sweeney.

Pottstown was now the owner of a two-story wooden building with a small bell tower on the roof and an attached gymnasium. People who came to Bethany remember it having four rooms for activities, that basketball and volleyball were played in gym, and in the basement were pool tables, pingpong tables, and a small shower room.

For many years the center was open during the school year – from September to June — and closed in the summer. Its hours, at least in 1959, were 5:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 9:00 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. on Saturdays. On weeknights children were sent home at 9:30 and then the gym was opened to adults, who mostly came to play basketball.

Though Bethany was a small center its dedicated staff offered a large variety of activities to the community. According to a 1952 Mercury article, the center offered, in addition to basketball and volleyball, “a large number of supervised activities for all age groups,” including but not limited to, “classes in art and handicrafts, dramatics – with productions of plays.” The game room offered a number of board games, such as checkers and chess, and the Boy Scouts, Girls Scouts and Brownies met there. Dances and social parties were also on the schedule.

Its first director was Pottstown native Richard J. Ricketts, known to all as “Mr. Dick.” He was assisted by a staff, most of whom were probably volunteers, that at times included his wife, Margaret, as well as Alice Beasley and Barbara Corum.

Following Ricketts’s death in 1967, Mercury articles show that Walter Weaver was the “center’s supervisor” and Mary Barber was “recreation supervisor.”

The Bethany Center, built in 1871, was showing its age by the 1960s. The passage of time and years of vigorous use had taken a severe toll on the wooden structure. On Sunday, Sept. 19, 1971, a bulldozer clanked onto the lot where the center occupied the top of the hill on the west side of Grant Street. The dozer lowered its blade and unceremoniously reduced the center to rubble.

The Mercury reported that after the bulldozer did its work “neighborhood children wandered over its collapsed wreckage” looking at “bits and pieces of its familiar interior.” The reporter noted that for “many of the adults in the neighborhood” who remembered its “open and familiar atmosphere” its demolition was “like the death of an ailing friend.”

In its place and almost finished was a new recreation center. Designed by Pottstown architect Richard Frantz and built by Pottstown contractor Warren Zern, the new building was dedicated Sat., Nov. 20, 1971. The Bethany Center was gone and so was its name.

Because Pottstown Borough Council wanted to emphasize that the “facility is for the use of the entire borough” it was named the Pottstown Community Center. The council also unanimously

SUBMITTED PHOTO Rosalius White, known to everybody as “Clapper” and an Olympic class weight lifter, is shown in this photo in his younger days. A man of great religious faith, “Clapper” gave up a chance to earn a spot on the Unite States Olympic team to stay in Pottstown and serve the community.

PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAM BARBER. Shown here in his World War 2 combat engineers uniform Richard James Ricketts, Sr. was known to generations of Pottstown citizens as “Mr. Dick.” His strong personality made him a mentor and role model for the hundreds of people that used the Bethany Recreation Center during the 25 years that he was there.

PHOTO COURTESY OF LOU JEFFRIES. The Bethany Center in 1967. Originally built as a chapel in 1871, in 1942 the Hill School sold it and the ground on which it stood to the Pottstown borough for $500. At the time of the sale the Hill School took everything out of the building, but in 1967 spots where pews and the altar had been were still visible. No one knows what became of the bell in the tower on the roof.