Woodburn (250?) Built 1946
March 17, 2026
March 17, 2026
I've always loved a good mystery. When I was in 4th grade, my favorite book series was Hank the Cowdog. It was about a crime-solving ranch dog who lived on a farm with his dopey sidekick. I couldn't get enough of them. I read every one in the library before Christmas and then had to pivot to the Hardy Boys (I loved the classics). There's just something about always being on the edge of your seat, waiting to see what's going to happen next, and trying to figure it out before the protagonist in the story does. As much as I love reading a good mystery novel or even watching a movie about one, I don't actually like solving them myself in real life nearly as much. I don't think I'd be a very good private eye. I get way too frustrated way too quickly. I don't have the patience for a stakeout. If I'm really interested in something, I want to be able to figure it out! There's also nothing worse than thinking you have something solved, and then a little later realizing you were off-base all along. This is a problem when it comes to researching old gyms and trying to figure out what's what. Where is the gym located? Is it still standing? Does it still resemble a gym? Is this the gym I think it is, or is it actually a modern gym masquerading as the older one I'm hoping it is? These are the questions that constantly haunt me. As I've been doing this a few years now, you would think I'd be a pretty good sleuth when it comes to deciphering some of these mysteries. In some ways I have gotten a lot better, but I still have days like today that remind me I have a long way to go.
Back in March I made a little loop around the southeast rim of Fort Wayne. I saw Warren, Bluffton, and Woodburn. Warren and Bluffton are pretty well-known old gyms amongst people like myself who share an interest in such things, but Woodburn certainly is not. I only learned about it because someone who reads my blog reached out over a year ago out of the blue and told me about it along with a few others in the area. The gym is attached to what is now the town hall on one side and the fire department on the other. Looking at current aerial pictures of it, it hardly looked big enough to house a gym, but I had a good source providing the info so off I went. When I got there, I realized my initial observation wasn't wrong, the place is tiny! I'll get into the specifics of it later, but it's among the absolute smallest that I've seen. I took my pictures, headed home, and here I was four months later getting ready to write about it, and I realized that I didn't know exactly when the gym was built. I knew the school itself that the gym was a part of was built in 1913, but I also knew the gym almost certainly wasn't built then, because no gyms were! The earliest gym we have on record anywhere in the state is from 1919 in Merom. They just were not prioritized whatsoever until the 20s. I started looking at historic aerial photos of the school dating back to the early 50s. I was confident that the portion of the building that currently houses the gym did in fact exist back then when Woodburn was still a high school (it consolidated into Woodlan in 1959), but I just didn't buy that the gym dated back to 1913. The internet was providing no clues. I was at my wits' end.
I then thought, what would my friend and research assassin Ted Shideler (of the wonderful Hiding in Plain Sight blog) do? He would look for an old article I thought. So I searched Newspapers.com, and found an article from 1913 talking about the school being built and all the different rooms it would have, and there was no mention of a gym! My heart sank. Where had I gone wrong? Was this gym actually built later? Maybe after the school was closed? There were many other additions to the building over the years, and I wondered if I had just interpreted the old aerial photos incorrectly. I asked some of the fine folks of Woodburn on Facebook for help, and luckily I was able to confirm via some very friendly patrons that the gym I visited was in fact the one that the Woodburn Warriors played in. While this made me feel better, it still didn't help me solve the mystery of when this gym was built. At this point I had worked at solving this conundrum on and off for a whole day. I was tired of it. And of course, how did it end up getting solved? The same way almost all my hardest mysteries do, by Ted himself. The guy got off work and had this mystery solved after probably five minutes of sitting down at his computer. He unearthed an old Indy Star article that explained the gym was actually added to Woodburn High School in 1946, and that there was actually an older gym somewhere in the building that was then converted to classrooms. Mystery solved. Thanks Ted!
Now that I've explained the dramatic saga of the Woodburn gym, let's actually talk about what's here! The section that looked from above like it was almost too narrow to hold a gym, is actually almost too narrow to hold a gym. The court is probably 20 feet short from sideline to sideline. On top of that, one sideline runs about a foot from the wall, and the other has about 8 feet of space to the wall, but it's underneath this weird little overhang. The Indy Star article Ted found from 1946 states that they used portable bleachers when the gym was built, but there couldn't have been more than a couple rows here. Behind one baseline is a few feet of space that I guess people could have stood in. Behind the opposite baseline is a small stage that I'm guessing held a decent percentage of the crowd as well. There were probably portable bleachers up on the stage like in many gyms from this era. The only seating anywhere in the gym were a couple of old wooden benches that were put off to the side that maybe the teams would have sat on? The bottom of the stage was torn out at some point and now the open area there is used for storage. The brick in the lower half of the gym has all been painted white, while the upper brick is still the original classic maroon color. As I mentioned, there's a unique little overhang over one sideline. This is the side that would have entered into the old school before it was torn down. The other sideline has some tall exterior windows that have been covered with decorative plywood. The original hardwood has been replaced with grey tile that I'm sure is more practical considering the gym is used more for community gatherings than basketball these days. Really the feature that stands out the most in the gym is the ceiling. It has very decorative designs running all throughout it between the old beams. It was hard to get a good picture, but it definitely grabbed my eye.
The Woodburn Warriors played in a tiny gym, and from the looks of old aerials I don't think the school was all that large either, but I don't think their story is a small one. They weren't able to capture a sectional title, but they still had some really good teams. One of them was the 1946 squad, the first to play in this gym. That team was the only one in the school's history to win two rounds of the sectional tournament (which they did before falling to colossal Fort Wayne Central), and they also brought home the Allen County tournament title, a feat that was almost as big as a sectional championship back in those days. A picture of that team hangs in the small town hall office that was added on to the gym building long after the high school closed. I've looked at hundreds of old team pictures over the years, but this one caught my eye. The players in it are all smiling, there's no one trying to be a tough guy. Just pure exuberance. They also look like they've just won a twelve-round prize fight. They're exhausted. Winning a single sectional or county tournament like that meant everything to the players in these small Indiana towns, and their entire communities for that matter. It's something that they and their families will remember for generations as the stories continue to get told. I'm glad I was (with help) able to unearth a gym that is a small part of those stories.
