Photograph by Unknown author Unknown author, Public domain. Via
Wikimedia Commons.
Smith Alumnae Gymnasium
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1976. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“The Smith Alumnae Gymnasium is a historic former athletic facility on the Smith College campus in Northampton, Massachusetts. Located facing Burton Lawn, it was built in 1890 as a fine addition to the adjacent Gothic style buildings.”
Wikipedia article Smith Alumnae Gymnasium, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 32 National Register listings in Hampshire County · listed in 1976 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.76000259- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
The city of Northampton has for several years established its cruslaing works near the north line of the town and at a distance from railroads, and works the Hatfield tonalite or hornblendic granite, which is a partly decomposed rock, more brittle than the trap, and in many ways an inferior rock for road ballast. The city has access beside the road or railroad within its own limits to several better ledges than the one it works now. In 1897 the city of Ware opened a quarry on the Coys Hill dike on the mountain side east of the railroad station. The dike is here 5 rods wide, favorably situated for quanying, and will furnish the best material in inexhaustible quantity.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 91 fires within 5 miles of Smith Alumnae Gymnasium between
2001 and 2020, burning about 326 acres in total. 7 started naturally. 5 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
29
Equipment and vehicle use
26
Debris and open burning
13
Recreation and ceremony
11
Natural
7
Arson/incendiarism
5
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 6,122 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Smith Alumnae Gymnasium between 1781 and
1975: 3,154 Plantae, 1,524 Fungi, 1,236 Animalia, 134 Chromista, 64 Protozoa, 9 Unrecorded, 1 Bacteria. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A., A. Albee, A. Allen and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
23 workings within 5 miles of Smith Alumnae Gymnasium: 12 past producers, 11 producers.
11 still produce. What was taken out: Brick Clay, Clay, Stone, Dimension, Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Northampton, the town this property stands in, in 36 storm reports between 1995 and 2025: 18 thunderstorm wind, 6 flood, 4 hail, 4 lightning.
The reports record 1 injury. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Record flooding along the Mill River caused extensive flooding in Northampton. The river crested at 15.6 feet on the 16th, which was the highest crest on record, and well above the previous record crest of 13.7 feet which occurred in October, 2005. Many roads near the river were closed and some evacuations took place as flood waters threatened nearby homes and businesses.|Minor flooding also affected the mainstem Connecticut River through Northampton. A crest of 119 feet was recorded at 430 pm on the 17th (flood stage is 112 feet).
After receiving roughly four and a half inches of rain from Tropical Storm Irene, an overtopped dike resulted in the closure of West Street in Northampton. At exit 24 on Route 5, there was five to six feet of water flooding the road, with two cars floating down the road.
In the Florence section of Northampton, a 50 foot by 50 foot wooden permanent pavilion structure was blown crooked at a landmark restaurant/tavern. The footings, which were lifted and bent, were attached by a metal bracket to concrete. The pavilion can accomodate 18 tables with 4 people per table. The building inspector classified the damage as $20,000. Slightly farther to the southeast, a 50 ft by 75 ft. section of roofing, including insulation and rubber membrane, was peeled off of the Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School. There was little in the way of water damage inside the school. The Northampton building inspector rated the roof damage as $30,000. Still farther to the southeast, a tree was down on Washington Avenue, as reported by amateur radio.
Numerous trees were downed in Northampton, including several on Summer Street and one on Massasoit Street which fell on wires. Large trees also were downed in Easthampton, including one that fell on a house and a car on Chestnut Street.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
3,478 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
Alumnae Gymnasium, dedicated in 1890, was designed by William C. Brocklesby who was commissioned to design at least nine buildings on the Smith College campus from 1886 to 1900. The gym stylistically has many ties to the High Victorian Gothic buildings Peabody and Steams had erected on campus during the late 1870's and early 1880's. The choice of similar materials: dark red brick with red mortar, and accents of brownstone, giving textural emphasis, are a unified theme among the early campus buildings as are the active massing, steep roofs and gables. The building falls into the additive style of the Victorian tradition with individually articulated units denoting the separate functions contained within.
From an angle, the jutting forms may look chaotic, but the hierarchical roof arrangement indicates an ordee. The steeply pointed and flaring, slate-roofed cupola with its diminutive wooden arcades screening the louvres pinpoints the center of the gymnasium space. The expansive slate roof encompasses the large interior space providing a strong horizontal effect on a north-south axis. Stepping down from that level, the gym is pierced from all four com- pass points by steeply pitched gables. These gables, like those of the Peabody and Stearns buildings, have a low parapet trimmed and braced in brownstone. The gym gables have the added feature of being stepped out on the sides like an overhang.
Midway down the main roof, equally spaced from other elements on the east and west sides, are slate roofed, wooden dormers. Each dormer has two windows with 8 over 2 sash arran- gements, the windows being separated by two feather-edged panels, one over the other. The wood exterior trim here and elsewhere on the building is presently painted a dark green.
/ARCHITECT William C. Brocklesby STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE Smith College was founded in 1871 through the bequest of Sophia Smith as a fulfillment of her moral obligation to humanity. "As coming times may develop or demand for the education of women and the progress of the race, I would have the education suited to the mental and physical wants of woman. It is . . . (my design) to develop as fully as may be the powers of womanhood, and furnish women with the means of usefulness, happiness, and honor now withheld from them."1 Yet there was a persistent question during the first decade of the college concerning the deleterious effects of a college education upon a woman's physical condition.
Thefirst director of Physical Education, Senda Berenson, not only refuted the implication, but adapted basketball for play by women so that Alumnae Gymnasium has the unique distinction of being the site of the first women's basketball game. Berenson felt that the game "trains the players to be clear headed and cool, quick to act and wise in judgment, essential qualities for success in life."2 The early graduating classes so strongly supported the concept that their first fundraising efforts were directed to building a permanent masonry gymnasium, among the first funded by and intended for the use of women. It is still used as a recreational gym by students and faculty. William C. Brocklesby was commissioned to design the gym in 1890.
In conjunction with the other buiidings he designed for the college, the Smith College campus buildings form the largest extant grouping of Brocklesby's buildings anywhere.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 76000259, 16 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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