By Frank Passic
Did you know that Albion High School once had its own fieldhouse for its athletic teams? In fact, that structure is still standing and is 100 years old this year! Let me explain. Our story goes back to May, 1926, when the voters approved by 375 to 176 a $175,000 bond for the building of a replacement grade school wing on the east side of the Central School complex on E. Michigan Avenue. Plans called for housing junior high students on the first floor, with the elementary grades on the second and third floors. The original east wing had been erected in 1885, and enlarged in 1893.
The Schumacher Construction Company awarded the contract for the project, and the original east wing, located in the rear of the east side of the Central School complex, was promptly removed. The bricks and materials from this structure were used that summer to erect a new sports fieldhouse in Victory Park. In those days the city and school system worked together to provide recreation for its youth.
The cost of erecting that building was $2,000. The Albion Evening Recorder reported on September 13, 1926: “City workmen are now engaged in running water and sewer lines into Victory Park to provide public toilets for men and women in the field house recently completed for the high school athletic teams and also to provide water for showers for the boys.”
Where is this building located? It’s across the road from the Victory Park spring, and yes, it is the building now used by the City Parks department to shelter its lawn mowers and other equipment used in maintaining our parks. If you take a look at this structure, you will see that the bricks match those of the original east and west wings of the Central School, especially the corner pieces. At the Washington Gardner High School building on E. Michigan Avenue today, you can look in the backside on the far west end and see the remains of the west wing which still has such corner pieces intact.
With the erection of the new fieldhouse, the Albion Athletic Board financed and fixed the football practice field, and the baseball diamond at Victory Park. In the many years following, the fieldhouse served as a locker room, and headquarters for activities at Victory Park run by the Albion Recreation department. When Albion High School moved to its new location on Watson St. in 1967, they had their own new football and baseball fields, and the Victory Park facility was no longer needed for those purposes. The building was eventually was taken over by the City of Albion as a park equipment facility, and remains so today.
From our Historical Notebook this week we present a photograph of the fieldhouse building in Victory Park. We also present a 1905 photograph of the east wing of the Central School complex that was demolished to build the new fieldhouse. How many of our readers were ever in this fieldhouse with your sports team while you were growing up?
