Southport (Old) (850?) Built 1930
July 28, 2026
July 28, 2026
I kind of started this blog by accident. What started out as me going to a bunch of gyms as I followed the Anderson boys team around a few years ago, turned into me randomly ranking all 53 gyms I had been to at that point, which led me to visiting the Hoosier Gym almost exactly three years ago and taking some very amateur pictures. I wanted to do something with those amateur pictures, so I created a website and posted a little write up about them. And now it's turned into whatever this is. I'm not a professional photographer, and I've never claimed to be. I don't have a fancy camera. I take all my pictures with my iPhone. If the lighting isn't perfect in a gym, it is what it is. I get what I get, and I don't throw a fit. My photos will never be hanging in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame like Chris Smith and Michael Keating over at the Hoosier Hardood Project who've done unparalleled work. Every once in a while I'll look back at a picture and think, "Hey, I stumbled upon a really cool one!" Other times I'm disappointed. Sometimes it's my own fault, other times the conditions just don't lend themselves well to getting quality photos. That was the case when I dropped by a little-known old gym over at Southport back in July. For a variety of reasons, I think these are the worst pictures I've ever taken of a gym.
Southport is synonymous with the great Indiana high school gyms because its present gym is an absolute masterpiece. It's one of the all-time greats. It was built in 1957, but Southport first started playing in the state tournament in 1914 when they scored only 6 points against the Whiting Oilers. This means they had to have played somewhere before 1957. It didn't take much searching to find out where, and I was pleasantly surprised when I realized the gym is still there! The old Southport High School and gym were built in 1930 on Orinoco Avenue. It's a beautiful grand old building that is as stately as they come. It served as a high school for a couple of decades before becoming a middle school. It now serves a variety of functions in the district, including as an early childhood center along with housing the administration offices. The Cardinals of Southport captured three sectionals while playing in this gym, right before a long string of success in the state tournament once they moved into their current home. When I arrived to check it out, kindergarten registration happened to be going on inside the gym on one side, while the partition at half court was brought down to block off the other side. To protect the privacy of the kids participating in registration, I only took pictures on the side of the gym that was secluded behind the partition. There were also a lot of things being stored off to one side in preparation for the school year that was about to begin. All this led to some pretty limited pictures. At the end of the day, no it's not ideal, but it's also not the end of the world. This is the reality of gym hunting sometimes when I'm trying to see gyms that are a part of active school buildings. It's not always perfect. Even within my crappy pictures, you can still see vestiges of what this place used to be.
Beyond the fact that conditions in the gym were not ideal for photos, the place doesn't exactly scream "1930s" even in its best state. The original bleachers are long gone. The only seating is 9 rows of retractable plastic bleachers along one sideline. It looks like there would have been space for about the same amount along the other sideline. The upper walls are all painted an odd black and white checkerboard pattern. It's certainly different, and also helps cover up the only remnants of what used to be the defining characteristic of the gym. There used to be a balcony running along each sideline that had additional seating up top. If you look super close, especially in the corners, you can see where the brickwork differs a little and the balcony would have been attached to the wall in some fashion. It reminds me of what I found at Shipshewana and Shelburn. I'm not sure if the balcony also crossed behind the baselines or not. There's a decent amount of space from the out of bounds line to the wall on one end, so it's certainly possible. Above where the balcony would have been are some old windows that have long since been covered up. Those windows along with the old exposed metal trusses and wooden bottom of the roof are the clearest indications of what this place must have looked like when the Cardinals were holding court here in the 30s and 40s. Speaking of a court, the one here has the classic elementary school rubber surface. It made me nostalgic, not for the glory days of high school basketball, but the glory days of my own primary school basketball career.
This may be the most stripped down old gym I've been to that's still actually used as a gym, and I've been to a couple that look like the proprietors of a local chop shop ransacked them. It certainly makes them hard to rank. I always try to go off of what they would have looked like in their prime, but with no old pictures and not much to go off of, it's tough. I'm just glad it's still here. It may not look like much, and honestly there's probably very few people left who remember what it was like watching a high school basketball game here, but as long as it's standing, it's another patch in the rich tapestry that we call Hoosier Hysteria.
