Oberlin Sports & Outdoors Tips by grandmaR

Savage Stadium Football

When I went to Oberlin, we had an unbroken record in football of consecutive losses that was so long that the seniors had last experienced winning a game in their freshman year. The URL below is a very funny essay on Oberlin sports. The picture was taken this year when we were walking over to Saturday reunion dinner (my former roommate's profile is on the side) with two insets from a picture taken in the fall of 1958.

We also had a marching band which could play (after all we had all those conservatory students) much better than they could march. No one took sports too seriously. There was one scholarship for an all-around athelete.

The men could play 11 different sports - football, track, cross country (and I had a friend who used to take me out on his Triumph motorcycle to help time the cross country meets), baseball, basketball, soccer, swimming and diving (we had a pretty good team), lacrosse, tennis, wrestling, fencing. The fencing team was coached by a Hungarian immigrant who was working as a janitor at one of the dorms.

Equipment: We did actually have a stadium called Savage Stadium - no roof, but a place to sit. The one college policeman came to the games and stood out on the track in front of the stands.

On June 12, 1925, the contract was awarded to the Van Blarcom Company of Cleveland for the construction of a new athletic stadium. The Osborn Engineering Company of Cleveland was the architect. The construction was made possible by subscriptions from 826 alumni, former students, present students, and other friends of the College, who provided funds for the erection of 1,750 seats at $12.50 per seat. These subscribers, known as "Stadium Builders," were given the privilage of purchasing seats for a period of years in the central perferred section of the stand. The new stand, with a seating capacity of 3,050, was ready for use in October, 1925. The cost was $38,00

Address: Woodland Street north of Union Street.

Theme: Sports Watching

Warner Gym (the Men's Gym)

I didn't have much to do with Warner because it was the men's gym and women weren't really welcome there. We had our own gym on the north end of campus.

Ground was broken for Warner Gymnasium in August, 1900. It was named in honor of its donors, Dr. and Mrs. Lucien C. Warner, of New York, who provided $45,000 for the building together with an endowment fund of $5,000. They also funded Warner Hall (which was the main Conservatory building on the corner of College Street).

An addition to the gymnasium, also provided by Dr. and Mrs. Warner, was completed in March 1912, costing $35,000. Warner Gymnasium was constructed of Ohio sandstone. Patton, Fisher and Miller, of Chicago, were the architects, and George Feick, of Sandusky, the builder.

The first floor contained offices, examining rooms, and custodian's room, waiting rooms, trophy room, and in the rear, rooms containing lockers. In the basement were the ball cage, courts for hand ball and other indoor games, and lockers for members of athletic teams. The main gymnasium hall was on the second floor, 65 by 110 feet, 22 feet high on the sides, and 40 feet high in the center; around the gymnasium, suspended from the roof, is a running track, measuring nineteen laps to the mile. There was a visitors' gallery at the north end. The swimming pool was in the women's gym.

[Warner Center now houses home to the College's theater and dance department. The second floor holds several practice and performance spaces, while faculty offices can be found on the first floor, along with the box office, with changing rooms and storage areas on the first floor and in the basement.]

Equipment: Pictures

Top left - the original gym.

Top right - how it looks in 2004.

Bottom left - looking from the back of Dascomb toward Peters after a snowstorm 1959. Shows the outside fire escape on Warner Gym.

Bottom right is the other side in the spring of 1959 with the Warner Hall building of the conservatory on the other side of it.

Address: 30 North Professor Street

Directions: Between Wilder, Peters and King on the site of the old Gymnasium (Second).

Theme: Other