THE NEW PARIS GYM

Check out this link - played many a b-ball game here as well as had our gym classes here. 

                                       https://hoosiergymjourney.weebly.com/new-paris.html

 

New Paris  Built 1927
July 10, 2026

For a guy who has a blog centered around old buildings, especially considering my wife is an interior designer, you would think I'd know a little bit more about architecture. Unfortunately that's not the case. I can't tell you whether a building features a Greco Roman design or has Gothic elements to it. I know what the word Renaissance means, but I couldn't pick a building designed in that style out of a lineup. I'm terrible at all of that stuff. What I am really good at is looking at an old gym and deciding, "Wow, I really like that!" It's not often that the exterior architecture of a gym wow's me more than what's inside. There are a few examples like Lima and Dupont, but usually I'm more focused on the interior. One thing that I've always loved about old gyms though is that they often include the year the gym was built somewhere in the the design or on an exposed capstone. When I look at them, I wonder if the people at the time thought much of it. Did they think including the year the gym was built would be impressive in 100 years when it's still standing? Did even they think their handiwork would last that long? I love seeing these years carved in stone because it really plants the whole building firmly in that historical period. It takes you back in time and gives these old gyms a little more aura. I doubt you'll find capstones like this in our newest gyms like Columbia City or Barr-Reeve. It would seem silly now to include one that said "2020," but maybe it wouldn't to people a century from now if these places that are new to us are still standing that far in the future. Back in July I found another gym with one of these engravings that dates the place all the way back to when Calvin Coolidge was president. It has one of the most beautiful exteriors I've come across, and that 1927 marker sits atop it all like a crown for a king. 

New Paris is one of the first old gyms in my home region of the state that I'm doing a full review on. I've hit a decent amount of fading gyms in the northeast corner, but not many that are reviewable. While I was never directly involved with the town or school growing up, I have a couple connections to it. The first is that my mom worked at the newer New Paris Elementary School for a year or two when I was kid and she was going back to college to become a counselor. The second is that in 1967 New Paris consolidated with Millersburg to form the school I had an incredible amount of disdain for when I was growing up: Fairfield. It's nothing personal against the Fairfield community, in fact I often thought we had a lot in common with the kids over there, they were just our rival in sports. While I couldn't stand them on the court, I actually became good friends with a lot of them through a church camp, and many of them were from the New Paris area. It's a tight-knit community filled with awesome people. Before consolidating into Fairfield, the New Paris Cubs won two early sectionals. One was in the inaugural year of this gym in 1927, and the other came a bit later in 1941. They bounced around sectional sites over the years, playing in Elkhart, Goshen, and Nappanee from time to time. In all of those sectionals they would have been one of the smaller schools there. They had more than their fair share of success over the years, and they experienced much of it playing in a gorgeous old gym, inside and out. 

We just put new carpet in a couple rooms in our house last month, and I've been over the moon. I've always been a big carpet guy. I think it belongs in most rooms in a house. One place I'm not sure it belongs though is on bleachers in a gym, especially when I'm pretty sure there are nice permanent wooden bleachers underneath it. This is my only real bugaboo with the New Paris gym. What is left of the original bleachers, which are 8 rows along one sideline, have all been covered in mustard yellow carpet. I'm not sure when this happened (the gym served the elementary year for a couple of decades after the high school closed, and has been a part of a church for around 20 years now), but it's a very curious stylistic choice. The only thing interrupting the bleachers from end to end is a tunnel entrance in the middle of them. I'm fairly certain the opposite sideline used to have a matching set of permanent bleachers, but they were torn out and the area was walled off to have storage rooms and possibly restrooms put in. A walkway with a railing was installed above to provide even more usable space that connects to the balcony area over one baseline end. I could be wrong, but it does seem that the baseline balcony was original to the gym considering the exterior hallway runs underneath it. There are no bleachers up there, and it seems like a place people probably would have stood and hung over the edge to get a good view of the action. 

High along the walls on three sides of the gym are big square windows made up of glass blocks which always look cool. A couple are covered up, but there are still some letting in lots of natural light. The original ceiing has been covered with an angled drop ceiling which looks fine, but I wonder what it looked like without it. Four big metal support beams sit right outside the out of bounds lines along both sidelines. What they would have taken away in terms of obstructed views, they more than make up for in added ambience. Attached to these poles are something I've never seen before in any other gym. There are wooden practice hoops that are raised and lowered by a pulley system of some sort mounted directly on the post with no rope or mechanism running to any other part of the ceiling or rafters. The hoop just goes straight up and down on the pole. When I was in the gym, the rim had to be 12-13 feet off the ground. I just love these one-of-a-kind finds. The playing floor is in phenomenal shape for a 99 year old gym. It's stained a classic light gold. You can also tell the main baskets feature the original glass backboards which are awesome. The wooden bottoms that the rims attach to are a dead giveaway. 

Attached to the old gym is the original New Paris High School building that is still fully intact, and you know how rare that is. It is just as grand as the gym. The church occupies and uses both buildings which is great to see. I took my exterior photos right before I left. I couldn't help but stop and linger for a few extra beats to take it all in. The intricate designs across the face of the gym, with the glass block windows on the sides, all set in marvelous dark red brick. It doesn't get much better. Northeast Indiana has never felt as exciting as the rest of the state when heading out on my travels. That's because it's where I'm from. What you know is never going to feel as exhilarating as something new, but this visit really shifted my mindset. It got me excited to visit the places in and around my own backyard in NECC country. Just because I'm more familiar with the history doesn't mean it's not worth telling, and there's so much that I've yet to uncover for myself. I couldn't have found a better jumping off point than this jewel in New Paris.