Laconia (300?) Built 1934
October 17, 2025
October 17, 2025
I've been to some pretty remote places on this gym journey. The hills of Crawford County made me feel like I was in a different biosphere when I visited Marengo and English. Hazleton and Decker felt like they were hidden away so well you would never find them unless you were purposely looking for them. Even in the flatlands of northern Indiana you can feel like you're really out in the boonies. It felt like I traveled through 100 square miles of nothing but cornfields to find Brook last fall. Raub also felt like a ghost town. When people ask for the most isolated places I've visited, three always come to mind though that are in their own tier. In no particular order: Tunnelton, Mecca, and Alamo all felt like they operated in their own dimensions of place and time. I wasn't sure if I would ever feel quite that off the grid again in my travels, but the last day of my fall break gym hunting managed to deliver. I took I-65 all the way down to Jeffersonville and New Albany before turning onto State Road 111. I thought it would just be a hop, skip, and a jump over to Laconia and Elizabeth from there. It was more like a hop, climb, jump over a cliff, fall down a mountain, crawl back up, and repeat before I got there. State Road 111 delivered one of the most stunning drives I've experienced anywhere in Indiana as it crawled along running parallel to the Ohio River. I even saw houses on stilts, which is something I associated with North Carolina beach homes, not Hoosier homesteads. Eventually I got off there and followed more winding state roads into the Clark and Harrison County hills. It was probably only a half hour of driving, but it felt twice that long, in the best way. I've maybe only met one other person when talking about old gyms who is aware of Laconia, and the remote nature of it may be why. Regardless, I finally found it, and I'm so glad I did.
If finding and actually driving to Laconia wasn't hard enough, finding someone to let me into the gym may have actually been more difficult. After months of Googling, Facebook searching, and everything else I could think of trying to find a contact, someone finally messaged me out of the blue and gave me the number of Mr. David Steen. Mr. Steen runs an old general store in downtown Laconia, which is as quaint and authentic to the hundreds that used to dot every small town in Indiana years ago, and he is also the caretaker of the gym. The Laconia gym was built as a WPA project in 1934, but it doesn't look like any of its fellow WPA gym brethren, at least not from the outside. The gym was built in the center of the high school, and is mostly surrounded by old classrooms. Looking at the building from the outside, the place actually looks kind of modern, and you would never know there's a gym in it. It's kind of hard to describe. The high school lasted until 1958 when it was consolidated into South Central in Elizabeth. The building then served as an elementary for awhile before that was shuttered as well. The classrooms were then turned into apartments, but thankfully the gym has been preserved. The Laconia Aces never won a sectional, but their legacy lives on. Right outside the gym is a neat little display case with newspapers, sweaters, and even the original school bell commemorating the days of Laconia High School. It also has one of the coolest artifacts I've seen in any display case yet: the starting pistol that used to be fired to start basketball games in this gym. This is one tradition we need to bring back!
I'm guesstimating the seating capacity here at about 300. That may be generous. I was told that there used to be benches along each baseline wall, and that more people sat up on temporary seats on the stage and others would stand right inside the doors along the baseline. Newport is the only other place I've been with such tight confines. If you got shoulder checked along any of the out of bounds lines, you were going to come face to face with a brick wall. On the bright side, they are really pretty brick walls at least! The brick is a very dark maroon that has light grout behind it and almost looks white-washed in spots. I love the look of it. Along part of one sideline wall are big beautiful windows letting in a lot of natural light. A couple of them are also filled in. The other side has some smaller windows higher up that were covered with a curtain when I visited. I could not tell if they are filled in or not. The baseline wall opposite of the entrance has a small stage with rounded corners at the top which is unique. There are small doors on each side that lead to where the locker rooms would have been. The roof is a simple A-frame with no cross beams of any kind. This makes it feel more like a chapel than an old gym. The current gym floor has a parquet design which gives it a little flair. It's also one of the narrowest courts I've come across.
Laconia lost their high school to consolidation earlier than most. South Central was one of the first to be born out of consolidation in the late 50s. I'm sure the effect it had on both Laconia and Elizabeth was dramatic. Rural towns had a hard time surviving once their kids were forced to travel somewhere else to go to school. I would love to see what the town of Laconia looked like back in its heyday. The fact that Mr. Steens has kept the spirit of the small town going in his general store is incredible. The store, along the with gym, allow you to get just a glimpse into those glory days. It took me awhile to get there, but I'm glad I was able to see both for myself. When we lose that glimpse, we lose the last remnants of the foundations our communities were built on.
