Restoring and renovating the country's neighborhood icons

Story by Christopher Percy Collier / Nov. 21, 2001

 Printer-friendly version

Former YMCA in Norfolk, Va. (YMCA of the USA/Cliff Smith YMCA Card Collection)

Picture your hometown. Envision the main strip, where all the action was. Now try to remember all the big buildings around it. Chances are, you’ll remember a bank or two, a few shops, a post office, a library, and probably a YMCA.

The YMCA: weight rooms and swimming pools. Temporary homes for wayward citizens and soldiers. A place where, as that oddly dressed 1970s band sang, "you can get yourself clean, you can have a good meal, you can do whatever you feel."

Established 150 years ago, the Young Men’s Christian Association became a permanent fixture in America’s architectural landscape because of its longstanding and pervasive presence in communities across the country. Built with sturdy materials, many of these colossal hunks of beauty are considered American legacies.

While a number of the original YMCA buildings, built in the early 20th century, still stand today, as age takes its toll, the decision to renovate, sell, or scrap becomes a hard one. Some buildings remain YMCAs, winning awards for their innovative renovations. Others have new owners and new uses as hotels, boarding houses, or health clubs.

Between 1994 and 1998, more than 140 YMCA facilities that were over 50 years old underwent major renovations, costing a total of $100 million.

In Medford, N.J., a turn-of-the-century hotel that became a Y in 1906 was rebuilt and renovated in 1999. In Columbus, Ohio, a 75-year-old YMCA building also underwent major architectural renovations in 1999 thanks to the assistance from the city, the Federal Historic Preservation Society, and several other organizations, resulting in a 95 percent occupancy of its 400 resident rooms. And in Virginia, two 1920s Beaux-Arts buildings have recently been renovated: one, in Portsmouth, is now an apartment building complex, and the other, which was once an Army-Navy YMCA in Norfolk, has become transitional housing.

Historic Y in Wilmington, Del. (YMCA)

The First Y

Founded in 1844 by George Williams, the YMCA originally began in London as a place for young men to find God, a place where Protestant boys went to pray, study the Bible, and avoid the temptations of vice. In 1851, retired sea captain Thomas Sullivan helped open the first American YMCA in Boston. Because the YMCA was then almost exclusively devoted to Bible study and prayer, the necessary facilities were minimal.

During the 1880s, however, the YMCA feared it would lose its biggest institutional supporter, the Protestant Church, if it continued to duplicate services. So it developed an ideology that focused on developing the "whole man." It soon began to emphasize "the triangle" of mind, body, and spirit, which is still evident in the YMCA logo.

In offering ways to develop the body, the YMCA needed facilities to accommodate the variety of new programs, which led to a building boom. From 1870 to 1930, more than 800 YMCAs were constructed, many according to a set of structural directives that the YMCA published and circulated to its builders. An 1891 manual, suggesting building sites, reads: "In a large city a location is generally sought near some center of travel." The YMCA’s International Committee recommended buildings with a single reception room at a central location. Gymnasiums were to be separate from dormitories. And in urban environments, instructions were provided to purchase plots of land near areas where young men congregated.

Of the many architects who received commissions for YMCA structures, of varying size and style, Louis Jallade came to be a leader. Jallade, a New York-based architect born in Montreal, brought the popular Beaux-Arts architectural style to YMCAs in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Virginia, where two of his works, in Portsmouth and Norfolk, were renovated this year.

In many ways, the Beaux-Arts style epitomizes our impression of stately YMCAs throughout the country: heavy stone bases, great hulking columns, arched openings, sculptural figures, wide staircases, and cavernous ceilings. The YMCA evolved into an instantly recognizable icon, the largest nonprofit community service organization in the United States, with more than 2,400 locations, each facility owned and operated independently. Using architecture to turn an idea into an institution, the YMCA has left its mark.

Christopher Percy Collier is a writer in Boston.

Read excerpts from our current issue

Recent Stories