School for Christian Workers Building, c. 1889

Construction on the building was completed in the spring of 1886 and it was dedicated on June 1 of that year. The building consisted of a reading room, gymnasium, parlor, a recitation room, an amusement room and fifty sleeping rooms. The Armory Hill YMCA also rented rooms in the building. In 1891 James Naismith, while a faculty member at the school, invented the game of basketball in the gymnasium of the building. In 1890 the School for Christian Workers separated into two schools which continued to operate out of the same building, the YMCA Training School and the School for Christian Workers. In 1896 the Training School finished the transition to its new location on Alden Street and in 1897 the School for Christian Workers became the Bible Normal College and moved to Hartford, Connecticut. The original building was torn down in 1965 to create a parking lot. In 1995, McDonald’s Corporation bought the land, excavating the original foundation and bricks before building a restaurant on the site. Today, there is a monument commemorating the site as the birthplace of basketball.

Caption on the back reads "Old S.C.W. Taken 1889 - Walter Lanphear Chaplin Conn. 1891 Class." A separate note on the back of the image indicates the photgraph was received Sept 1941.

An image of the School for Christian Workers presumably taken in the winter in 1891 as there is snow on the ground. The original building of the School for Christian Workers (now Springfield College) was built on the corner of State and Sherman streets in Springfield, Massachusetts. The building has been known by many different names over the years including the Winchester Square Building, the Mason Square building and the Armory Hill building.