YMCA Fun Facts

The YMCA has a long and very interesting history.  Some of our current holidays, sports and organizations began with the Y.

Did you know:

• The original Young Men’s Christian Association started in London in 1844 in response to unhealthy social conditions arising in the big cities at the end of the Industrial Revolution
• The first U.S. YMCA was formed in Boston on December 29, 1851
• The YMCA established the first retirement fund for any major welfare organization founded through a donation from industrialist John D. Rockefeller
• The YMCA provided the right environment for ideas and organizations that might never have started without them such as:  The Boy Scouts of America, Camp Fire Girls, Toastmasters and Father’s Day (all of which got their start at YMCAs)
• One of the first YMCAs was also one of the earliest African-American organizations in the United States founded in Washington, D.C. in 1853 by Anthony Bowen
• The Cincinnati YMCA offers the nation’s first-recorded English as a Second Language, courses for German immigrants in 1856 – known today as ESL
• The first “student YMCA” started in 1856 at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee
• First YMCA to serve the military is founded in Portsmouth, Virginia in 1857
• The Charleston, South Carolina YMCA starts the first Y women’s auxiliary in 1858 which led classes and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for new buildings
• First YMCA building in the United States is built in Baltimore in 1859 at a cost of $7,000
• May 27, 1861 the New York YMCA Army Committee is formed to aid soldiers in the Civil War
• June 28, 1864 President Lincoln signs the Congressional charter of the YMCA of Washington, D.C.
• 1867: E.V.C. Eato of New York City becomes the first black delegate to attend the YMCA annual convention – he is given a standing ovation
• 1869: a YMCA membership receipt shows the annual dues at $2.00
• The first YMCA buildings constructed with gymnasiums are opened in Washington, D.C., San Francisco and New York City in 1869
• The first black student YMCA formed at Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1869
• The first Chinese-American YMCA is founded in San Francisco in 1871
• The first Railroad YMCA was organized in Cleveland in 1872 in a “lowly room set apart in the Cleveland Passenger Station, to improve the conditions of railroad men”
• The first Sioux Indian YMCA was organized in 1879 in the Dakota Territory by Thomas Wakeman, son of Chief Little Crow – the number grew to 66 Sioux associations with more than a thousand members
• In 1881 Robert Roberts of the Boston YMCA coins the term “body building”
• September 29, 1885 the world’s first indoor swimming pool is dedicated at the Brooklyn, New York Central YMCA
• 1885: Sumner Dudley, a Y volunteer from New Jersey, takes a group of boys camping to Orange Lake, near Newburgh, New York – he would later be called the “father of YMCA camping”
• 1885: The Brooklyn, New York housed the first reported “swimming bath”
• 1886: the Buffalo, New York YMCA hires Ellen Brown the first full time secretary in America employed for work with boys – worked until her death in 1922
• 1888: William Hunton becomes the first African-American general secretary of a local YMCA in Norfolk, Virginia – William Hunton in 1891 is later hired to become the national secretary of the “Colored men’s department” which was created by the national YMCA
• In 1889 Hi-Y, a high-school boys’ service club starts in Chapman, Kansas to promote Christian character in speech, sportsmanship and scholastic achievement
• 1889: the first permanent Army YMCA is built at fort Monroe, Virginia
• 1891: James Naismith, a Springfield College instructor, with the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts invents basketball as an indoor winter sport – in 1895 he went on to became director of physical education for the Denver YMCA – James Naismith went on to invent the football helmet
• 1894: England’s Queen Victoria knights YMCA founder George Williams on the 50th anniversary of the Y’s founding
• 1895: middle-aged businessmen played the first game of volleyball in the gymnasium of the Massachusetts’ Holyoke YMCA – In the span of only four years the YMCA invented two athletic “contests” destined to be Olympic sports: basketball (1891) and volleyball (1895)
• 1907: at the Detroit YMCA the world’s first mass swim lessons began under the instruction of George Corsan, a Canadian who invented the new radical method: group swimming lessons
• 1909: the YMCA launched a campaign “to teach every man and boy in North America” to swim – the year prior 3,300 people drowned in the United States, mostly young men
• 1910: the world’s first indoor filtered pool is built at the Kansas City, Missouri YMCA
• June 6, 1910 Father’s Day, founded by Sonora Louise Smart, starts at the Spokane, Washington YMCA
• 1910: YMCA leader Dr. Luther Gulick and his wife, Charlotte, founded the Camp Fire Girls
• YMCA of Central New Mexico opens 1915 in downtown Albuquerque.
• YMCAs pioneered lifesaving – Springfield College student George Goss writes first book on lifesaving as his college thesis, published 1916
• Forerunner of today’s Black History Month began at the Wabash Avenue YMCA in Chicago in 1926 where is was originally known as the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History
• President Ronald Reagan was a YMCA-trained lifeguard in Dixon, IL and is credited with saving 77 lives in Rock River.  He also played in the YMCA’s band.
• 1989: YMCA Earth Service Corps start in Seattle.
• 2007: Grand opening of the H.B. and Lucille Horn Family YMCA.
• 2010: McLeod Family YMCA remodel is completed.