Elizabeth (500?) Built 1937
October 17, 2025
October 17, 2025
With how divided our culture is today, there aren't many universal experiences that people can relate to or find common ground in. We all seem to be living different lives based on what our political and religious beliefs are. It's sad. Back in the day when there used to be 4 TV channels to choose from, people had much more similar interests and common experiences. This is partially why basketball took off like wildfire. If a school had 60 boys in it, 50 of them probably went out for the basketball team. That's how like-minded kids used to be in what interested them. Obviously there were a lot fewer entertainment options back then. Nowadays there are schools with 500 girls in them that can't even find 20 to fill a full varsity and JV basketball team. It's wild. While common experiences seem rare nowadays, there are a few that people can still connect with. I think one of them is having a childhood celebrity crush. Almost everyone can think of one celebrity they became smitten with in their formative years that captured their attention. They tend to stick with you. For me, this was Elizabeth Swan (Keira Knightley) in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I just thought she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen, and that English accent certainly helped too. I loved those movies growing up, and she certainly was one of the reasons why. Ever since then, I've found the name Elizabeth to be very elegant and regal, just beautiful. Little did I know that I would one day find a basketball gym bearing that name, and it would be almost just as gorgeous.
Elizabeth is a tiny little hamlet nestled in the hills of Harrison County. Maybe I shouldn't call it tiny, it's got a couple more streets than Laconia which is where I visited right before I came here. The ole Elizabeth Pirates attended this school and played in this gym from 1937 until 1958 when they consolidated with Laconia to form South Central just up the road from here. The Pirates didn't have a lot of postseason success, winning just 9 sectional games in their entire existence. Playing in a sectional that had not one, but two powerhouses in New Albany and Jeffersonville doesn't exactly make that surprising. Like their neighbors over in Laconia though, they still had plenty of community support. Also like Laconia, they played in a gym and school that were a little unconventional for their time. The Posey Township school building (known as Elizabeth) was built in 1937. The school is a sprawling one story building, instead of the standard two to three story brick monoliths that were built most places in the 20s and 30s. The gym sits in the center of the school, surrounded by rooms on all four sides. You can't really get a good view of it at all from the exterior. After the high school closed, the building was used as an elementary for many years until the mid-80s. Thankfully, the school has been repurposed into community center and public library (which I think is maybe the perfect use for an old school building). I'm so thankful it was all able to be preserved. It's in great shape, and the light shining through the windows on the day I visited illuminated it beautifully.
The centerpiece of the Elizabeth gym is a rare feature I've only found a couple of other places, the sideline stage. The one here actually isn't that particularly wide. It runs from about free throw line to free throw line, and that estimation might be a little generous. It has two brick inlays on each side framing it vertically with a more conventional beam running across the top. All the brick in the gym has been painted a lighter color so it all kind of blends in together. There is no real seating in the gym anymore, but at one time there were a few rows of bleachers along the opposite sideline. The baselines here are definitely more spacious than most gyms from this era, but there wouldn't have been enough room for seating, though I'm sure people stood along the wall here. I'm guessing there was probably some seating on the stage as well. All four sides of the gym have gorgeous square windows along the top that never were filled in. They allow light to splash onto the playing floor and provide a magnificent view of the place. There are small openings on each side of the stage that lead to stairs accessing it. There isn't much on the walls, though the brickwork on the lower half compared to the upper half is a little different which is unique. There's a classic old scoreboard hanging up. The baskets are original and on very long supports that are just jutting out from the baseline walls. It's a good thing no one was ferociously dunking back in the day, they may not have been able to handle it. It's hard to say if the wood floor is original, but it's in good shape. It has a rich golden hue to it. It looks incredible under the light coming through the windows.
Walking back out of the building, I stopped to check out what looked like a big framed picture on the wall. It turned out to be the blueprints for the school from way back in the day. I've seen a couple seating map blueprints and things of that nature before, but never the full detailed blueprints for an entire building. They were really neat to check out. It puts into perspective how much attention was paid to every minute detail when these old beauties were designed. People put so much time and effort into them because they knew how much they would mean to the community. Often times gyms and schools were built with money that was raised by the community itself, not just fully financed by the government. This is why it's so painful to see so many of them fall into disrepair or disappear completely. It's why I'm so thankful for every single place like Elizabeth that has been painstakingly preserved. It shows that people still care. I pray that never changes.
