Mooresville (Newby) (900?) Built 1921
July 28, 2026
July 28, 2026
I spent a lot of time in antique stores growing up. At least it felt like a lot of time. My mom would probably say it wasn't as much as I'm making it out to be in my head. It certainly was more than the average child though. My mom loved antique shopping. We would go in the summer, when we were on vacation, or just whenever the opportunity would strike. My mom even had her own booth in an antique store for a couple years in Shipshewana. I didn't necessarily hate it, it's part of what sparked my love for history at a young age. I was always in search of something cool though. It always seemed to be that 90% of the stuff in antique stores was there just because it was old, not because it was significant in some way. I was always searching for that other 10% that would "wow" me. I'm still that way today as an adult when I go inside these stores. It makes me ponder the question, can something be considered historically significant purely because it is old? Does every single rusty hacksaw hanging in an antique booth somewhere even worth selling? Judging by how little attention I give things like this when I'm in antique stores, I guess I'd have to say no. There has to be a story behind an item or building that means something to someone to give it value. Simply being old isn't enough. When you find something that has a really neat story behind it, is unique, and also happens to be very old, that's where the magic happens. You can find that magic southwest of Indianapolis over in Mooresville.
One of the most common questions about gyms that I get from people who know what I do with this blog is, "So which one is the oldest?" It's a loaded question, without a perfect answer, and one that comes with a lot of caveats. The oldest active gym is Mishawaka which was built in 1924. For the longest time I thought the oldest gym still standing that was built specifically for basketball was the Newby Gym in Mooresville which was built in 1921, and is the one we are going to focus on here. Then I heard about the old gym down in Merom that was built in 1919 for the college there. I was told conflicting stories about whether the high school actually ever used it or not for games, and just in the last couple of weeks I've been able to confirm that they didn't. Then I remembered all the old basement gyms that used to exist in the bottoms of the old rural brick schools that were built from 1900-1920. There are barely any left, but there are a few! Dugger and Vincennes Lincoln are intact but have been turned into classrooms and apartments respectively. The basement gym in Milroy is still hanging on and was built in 1912, so if we want to get really technical about what's truly the oldest surviving high school gym in the state that was actually built for basketball, I think it would be that one. This isn't accounting for the gyms in places like Matthews and Wingate that are even older structures but were originally used for non-gym purposes like a dance hall and a horse livery. It's all very convoluted, and makes my head hurt. After the whole Merom mystery that I was working on this month, I'm kind of tired of it all. Suffice it to say, very old gyms are awesome. They have value not just because they're old, but because they were the heartbeat of the communities in which they resided, just like the one we are going to talk about today.
The old gym in Mooresville was finished in 1921. According to the pamphlet you can pick up in the oldest free public high school building in the state which is right next door (talk about a historical campus!), it was truly a community effort. The funds were all raised through local businessman and townspeople, and the high school basketball team did the work excavating the site and hauling the gravel needed to build the gym. The gym was dedicated with a game against Center Grove. It was the home of the Mooresville Pioneers until 1959 when a new high school and gym were built in another part of town. In the early years of the gym, they played in the nearby Martinsville sectional. In the 40s, many of those sectionals moved to Bloomington. It was in 1944 Bloomington sectional that the Pioneers finally broke through and won their first and only sectional title during the period of time when this was their home gym. That must have been quite the team! In the same year they also captured the Brazil regional. After the high school moved, the gym served as a middle school facility for a short period of time, then an elementary gym for a couple of decades, and then finally as the home of the Mooresville Junior Basketball League which it still is today. Along the way the gym was named after Arthur Newby, a local entrepreneur and philanthropist. As the urban sprawl of Indianapolis has slowly crept closer and closer to Mooresville over the decades, the population has skyrocketed. In some ways it has turned Mooresville into a quasi-suburb of Indy. What used to be a small town farm school is now a 4A behometh in basketball. Even so, places like this old gym help keep it rooted in its identify and traditions.
I was able to check out the gym at the very end of my summer break. You never know exactly what you're going to be faced with when you walk into these old gyms. Pictures I had seen made it look like it was in decent shape, but I'm not sure I was completely prepared for what I found. The people tasked with caring for one of the very oldest gyms we have, regardless of what caveats you want to use, have done an impeccable job. It is the gold standard of gym preservation efforts. One thing that struck me on the day I visited, but I didn't really think about until lates, was the fact that the exterior of the gym is made of the standard dark brick, while the interior is all wood. Rereading the pamphlet this week, I found out that the gym originally was just a wooden frame structure, but that the brick outer layer was added almost immediately so the gym would match the rest of the historical buildings on the school's campus. In an era when practically far outweighed design aesthetics when it came to basketball gyms, that's a really neat fun fact! The gym features a pretty normal small school gym setup: bleachers along the sidelines and a stage on one end. The one specific way it stands out beyond just how immaculate it is, is the upper balcony that is intact and running across the baseline opposite of the stage. This seems like as good a place as any to start our description.
The balcony is reached by stairs in both of the baseline corners that run up the sides of the bleachers on those ends. A solid white wall keeps spectators from falling to the depths below. Today this area is used as the concession stand for the Junior Basketball League, back in its varsity basketball days I'm sure it was a great vantage point to stand and watch the action below. Underneath it are a couple of support beams, a random ladder, and a old-timey door that leads out to the front of the gym that faces the road. There are also big square windows that run across the wall behind the balcony. These windows actually span across the entire gym except for the side that has the stage. While not original, they've kept the retro design which matches the aesthetic of the rest of the gym. It's just nice to see some old windows that haven't been blocked in! The wooden walls all around make this place feel like a bigger and fancier version of the gym in Economy. Reading the pamphlet, I also learned that the permanent bleachers that are now in the gym were not original to it. Portable bleachers and chairs were actually brought in during the earliest days. Judging by the style of the bleachers in the gym now though, I'm guessing they weren't built too long after, probably in the 30s at the latest. They are just gorgeous. They're all painted white, and are made out of multiple wooden slats working both vertically and horizontally and are braced with little triangles that jut out into the foot space of the spectators. I've never seen anything quite like them.
While I'm sure the hardwood floor that's here today is not original, it still looks very sharp. It's stained a light-tan color with a simple but tasteful navy blue "M" at half-court. Turning attention to the baseline with the stage, there this a lot to take in. Up in the corners here are little platforms. The wood on them matches the wood in the rest of the gym, so it seems like they're original, but I've never seen anything like them in a gym this old. I don't know if they were used for press or something else, but they are certainly curious. In the center of the wall is the stage itself. It features curved corners at the top and a heavy red curtain running across it. A tasteful white "M" is stitched ornately at the center of the upper ribboning. An older one is hanging in a frame to the left of the stage, while the old center-court "M" from the original hardwood floor is hanging in a frame to the right. An ancient scoreboard hangs in an upper corner on this end as well. It all ties the place together perfectly.
After visiting the gym, I got the chance to go next door to the original Mooresville High School that was built in 1861. It's now a museum of sorts for all things Mooresville. I could spend multiple paragraphs here just listing the incredible artifacts housed in it. Learning about all the history of the school and town was a thrill. While I was looking around, Mrs. Susan Haynes, who works for Mooresville schools and showed me around, told me that Caitlin Clark and Tyrese Haliburton had just filmed a commerical in the gym a couple weeks prior. Talk about a dichotomy between the old and the new. I was taken aback by both. They aren't from Indiana and probably didn't understand the significance themselves, and that's fine, but it wasn't lost on me. The old Mooresville gym has been around since the very earliest days of Hoosier Hysteria, before it was ever even known as that. To this day it is still being used by basketball royalty. It may be old, but it's not "just old." It has an intrinsic value to the community of Mooresville that cannot be quantified or put into words. Even though I just spent seven paragraphs trying to do so.
