Old Bourbon Gym
With March Madness in full- swing, I thought a look back at what was Marshall County’s last historic temple to basketball was in order. The Old Bourbon Gym fell to the wrecking ball in 2020, the same year that Plymouth lost its Centennial Gym, built in 1936. For many, the smell of the hardwood floor, screech of shoes, and scoreboard buzzer epitomizes the Hoosier experience.
The Bourbon Community Building-gymnasium was located on the northeast side of Bourbon on the campus of the consolidated Triton School Corporation. The gym was built as both a gymnasium and community building in 1928, appended to an earlier school building constructed in 1917-1918. Both the old school building and gym have been razed. The building had elements of the Colonial Revival style and was designed by Bradley & Babcock, architects from Fort Wayne. It was built by Merle R. Hodges and Sons. A bell from the old school was centered between the building’s front entries in the lawn.
The Bourbon Community Building-gymnasium was used for entertainment and recreation, as well as other community functions associated with the school. School plays were held in the building using a stage built into the east wall. Usually two plays a year were held: a school play and a senior play. Graduation commencements were also held in the gym. Prior to its construction, the community often used opera houses in the downtown or church sanctuaries for commencement programs and other entertainment functions. It appears the first graduation commencement ceremony held in the gym occurred in 1931. A program for the event indicates the location as the “Community Hall”. The building also included a projection room from which moving pictures could be shown to a large audience. The new community hall/gymnasium had filled a previously unmet need for a facility large enough to accommodate such social activities.
The most pervasive use of the building was for athletic purposes, and more specifically for basketball. With the growing popularity of basketball at the turn of the century, communities typically found large open halls in the upper floors of downtown buildings in which to play the sport. Bourbon was no different. In 1915, basketball was played in the Davis Opera House, a facility that also served as a site for graduation ceremonies. The Bourbon teams were called the “Comets”. A girls basketball team was formed in 1918. In 1928, with the construction of the community hall/gymnasium, the community had a new facility in which to play the sport. The Bourbon boys basketball team won the Marshall County championship game over Plymouth in 1940. They won sectional titles in 1943, 1950, and 1962. The 1962 sectional title was won in a close game over the Bremen Lions with a final score of 56 to 55. After consolidation in 1963, the corporation’s team names were changed to the Triton Trojans.
New facilities followed consolidation and while an attempt was made to save the Old Gym, it succumbed to the passage of time, and soon to memory. The Old Bourbon Gym was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. When it was razed in 2020, it became the first building in Marshall County listed on the Register to be demolished in over a quarter century.