Fairbanks (650?) Built 1925
October 14, 2025
"Special" is a word that probably gets thrown around too often and too flippantly. Everything seems to be special these days. Throughout my life I've always heard it used in sports. "You've gotta see this guy, he's special!" Now as a teacher, it's used all the time to describe anything kids do. "Oh you have to see Susie's test, she got them all right again, she's just so special!" One of my favorite movies growing up was The Incredibles. One of the plotlines in that film is that the villain tries to use gadgets and science to ensure any normal person can be a superhero if they want, even if they don't have special powers. He has a vendetta against superheroes and doesn't want them to be perceived as anything exceptional. A line from that movie has stuck with me all the way through adulthood: "When everyone's super, then no one will be." The idea being that if everyone and everything is considered special, that it really takes the power out of the word. It doesn't mean anything. To be special means to be set apart in some way, different from the rest. I'm sure I'm guilty of overusing this term and others like it to describe things I enjoy that are neat, but probably not as extraordinary as I make them out to be. This would include when I talk about gyms. I've written well over a hundred of these blogs now, and I try my best not to be repetitive, but I know I fail sometimes. Sullivan County delivered in a big way though once again when I visited back in October, and I think I'm going to do it again, I'm going to use that term. This time I don't think I'm cheapening it though. It isn't a failure of perspective. After leaving Graysville, I headed back up State Road 63 to Fairbanks. What I found stopped me in my tracks. I was spellbound, and it was special.
Almost every single rural township or small town that had a high school operating from 1900-1940 had a building that resembled others like it across the state. These buildings were almost always 2-3 story brick structures with little designs that set them apart from one another ever so slightly. Many of them had small gyms in the basements or played in big assembly rooms in the upstairs. Eventually most of them had proper gyms added on at some point. Over the years, many of these gyms have mercifully been saved. I'd say 95% of the school buildings themselves have not been so lucky. They've been lost to the wrecking ball and the sands of time. I can count the number of old schools like this that I've found still standing on two hands. I know there are a couple I'm missing, but Williamsburg, Gas City, and Graysville come to mind. Buildings like this are just not made anymore. Stepping inside of them is truly like entering a time machine. Of the few survivors I've had the chance to explore, none quite took me back in the way that Fairbanks did. The school here was built in 1910. It stands tall, two stories plus a basement facing the street. A grand, rounded, "hobbit" front door sits as the centerpiece. Inside is a central staircase that leads to each level. The classrooms on each floor have doors that enter into a central landing. It just puts you right into the scene in Hoosiers when Norman Dale walks into Hickory High for the first time and meets Myra Fleener. Those scenes were filmed in the old Ninevah high school building which was razed many years ago, but it just as easily could have taken place here. If I had the time or the clearance, I could have spent hours just exploring the school, but I was here for the gym., and the gym was more than worth the price of admission (which admittedly was nothing).
Another hobbit door stands at the entry to the gym which was built onto the back of the school in 1925. You won't find a more whimsical entrance to a gym. Right outside it are a few trophy and display cases that showcase old Fairbanks memorabilia. The Fairbanks Trojans competed here until 1957 when they were joined together with Farmersburg, Shelburn, and Hymera to form North Central. It was then turned into an elementary for many years before that closed and some members of the town stepped up and preserved it as a community center, which it has remained as to this day. Judging by the signs hung up around the facility, it looks like it is used quite often for exercise, classes, events, and various community programs. Walking through the doors to the gym, it's clear that while parts of it have been modified to fit the needs of the community center over the years, much of it is still intact today as it was a full century ago.
Part of what makes this place so distinct, and what caught my attention years ago when I first laid eyes on it in Historic Hoosier Gyms by Kyle Neddenriep, is the layout of the place. It not only features the ever-elusive sideline stage, but also a three-sided balcony that spans two baselines and one sideline. Again, I'm probably missing one, but I cannot think of any place that has a setup quite like this. The balcony features three rows of permanent wooden bleachers. There's a little landing at the top where classroom style chairs have been set against the wall to act as an extra row. It makes you wonder if there used to be another row there more permanently in the past. The bleachers that are there have been painted a beautiful deep shade of blue on the tops of the bench seats, while everything below and on the sides have been painted a more bluish-grey. The bleachers have been removed along one baseline end and some tables and chairs have been put in their place, but it's easy to imagine what it would have looked like originally. One of my favorite little quirks to the gym is that at the top of the balcony bleachers, in the middle of the sideline, are a set of doors that lead into the second floor of the school. Again, I would love to come back and explore more sometime with a guide that is more familiar with the whole place.
The stairs that lead down to the lower level are in the corners that meet the wall that features the stage. The wooden bannisters look like something out of a Victorian mansion (one of my other historical fascinations). Any lower level seating that used to be in the gym is long gone. You can see the tiered floor leading down to the court level, so it's easy to imagine that there were probably a few rows of seats along all the non-stage sides of the gym back in the day. Old church pews have been lined around the gym in many of these spots now. I'm guessing they provide seating for when programs or other events are put on in the gym. The stage itself is very grand, sideline stages always are. It's wide and regal, framed in by a dark wood perimeter. The brick wall in the back is faded from years of use. It's easy to imagine the number of graduations, Christmas programs, and other community events that have taken place on it over the last hundred years. The hardwood floor has been stained a classic golden yellow color. One of the main baskets has a more modern glass backboard, but the other utilizes an old school wooden backboard that fits the aesthetic of the gym beautifully. The last thing I want to point out is just the overall blue and yellow color scheme. It's everywhere, and for some reason it just really works for me. It ties the whole place together in a way that connects the old to the new, and the past to the present.
One thing I pray never happens is that I visit so many of these old gyms that the "newness" of them all starts to wear off. I never want to become numb to their histories or traditions just because I've been to a lot of them. So far that hasn't been an issue whatsoever. Every single one touches me in some way, even the ones that may be on the less exciting end. That's part of why I love documenting my visits here. Whenever I look at one of my old blogs, it takes me back to the thoughts and feelings I experienced when I was actually standing in the gym. Sometimes these memories are so strong I can feel them in my bones. Those are the truly special ones (there's that word again). I have a sense Fairbanks is going to fall into that category when I look back on it in the future. It's certainly not the biggest gym, it wasn't the home to multiple sectional winning teams, but man alive does it capture the essence of what Hoosier Hysteria was like back in the days when it mattered most. Even more so, it captures what it must have been like to live and go to school in a small town where everybody knew everybody and life was just simpler. As I sit here tonight writing this blog after coming home from a game at a small town school (Union Modoc) that is about to be shuttered because politicians in Indianapolis deem it a waste of money, I can't help but think about what we've lost, even as this old building has survived. It's a monument to what made Indiana, Indiana. It's also a stark warning of the perils that may lie ahead if we continue to seek maximum efficiency at every possible turn and do not place any value in the small communities that have been the backbone of our wonderful state since its inception.
