1935-36 Box Elder High School Gymnasium

Ken Bott
1 day ago
2 min read

During the Great Depression, federal programs and money were used to do various projects throughout the United States. One of the projects in Utah was to build a gymnasium for Box Elder High School. It was built north of the high school and across Forest Street and stood where the "Boot, Shoe, Harness, and Hat" cooperative building had stood. (The scene from "It's a Wonderful Life" where the gym floor opens over a pool was filmed in a school gymnasium in Beverly Hills, CA that was also built as part of this program.)

"In Brigham City, the PWA sponsored another public building, the Box Elder High School Gymnasium. This was a more ambitious project, one of twenty Utah school gymnasiums built during the 1930s. Of red brick, the building cost $106,000. Its construction provided work not just for Brigham City laborers but for the Joseph Nelson architectural firm, an Idaho general contractor, a city building inspector, a Utah plumbing/heating/ventilating contractor, and a roofing/sheet metal specialist.

The design, acceptable for the time, provided for two gyms: a 7,000-square-foot boys’ gym with seating for 1,000 and a girls’ gym one-fourth that size. There was also a tiled swimming pool, locker rooms, classrooms, and a handball court."

https://historytogo.utah.gov/new-deal-agencies/...

"The big gymnasium, one of the largest and finest buildings of its kind in the inter-mountain west, with its sprung floor, was built in 1934 at a cost of $114,537, the labor being paid for through the Federal Civil Works Administration (CWA), one of the emergency administration agencies set up for coping with the depression.Three Score, 223, and School Board Minutes, October 25, 1934 and September 13, 1935. The inclusion of a swimming pool and small gym in addition to the large gymnasium were great benefits to the students and public."

https://brighamcityhistory.org/edu.../box-elder-high-school/

The old gymnasium was eventually destroyed and replaced by the Box Elder Middle School gym in 2013.

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