Hull-House Highlights

"Rose Marie Gyles and the Hull-House Gymnasium"
Hull-House Gymnasium

Rose Marie Gyles moved to Hull-House settlement after her graduation from Rockford College. By November 1893 she had become the first director of the settlement's new public gymnasium that had opened the same year. The building, one of the earliest of its kind in the United States, was one of the first gymnasiums to be built in Chicago. In addition to a large space for exercising and showering, it contained a public coffeehouse, lunchroom, a kitchen, and a men's club room outfitted with billiard and card tables. Use of the gymnasium was divided between women and men, girls and boys, with the evenings typically reserved for the men. When first constructed, it was the largest building in the settlement complex and was used also as an auditorium and as a reception and ballroom for different Hull-House clubs.

Gyles was gymnasium director for fourteen years. She taught women's and girls' physical education classes at the settlement and directed the gymnastics program at Hull-House summer school held in Rockford, Illinois. She also supervised activities at the Hull-House playground, constructed in 1893, the first public playground in Chicago.

Gymnastics were a popular activity at Hull-House, where Gyles taught women's classes "marching and fancy steps, dumb bells and Indian club drill, free movements, gymnastics, Swedish movements and games" (Hull-House Bulletin, June 1897, 2). Gyles introduced team competition in women's sports at a time when most of her professional colleagues discouraged such activities. In 1896, she coached a women's basketball team at Hull-House, most likely the first organized in Chicago. Although it is not known whether Gyles was the catalyst for forming the team, she was listed as the director of team practices, which were held weekly. The June 1897 Hull-House Bulletin reported the girls' basketball team victorious in every contest it played that season. The best game of the season, against Englewood High School (then located in the Chicago suburb of Englewood, soon to be annexed to the city), was "fast and exciting" (Hull-House Bulletin, June 1897, 5) and played between two equally prepared and experienced teams. The Hull-House team won by a score of five to three.

Gyles also instructed teachers in Swedish gymnastics at the Chicago Froebel Association's Kindergarten Training School, headquartered at Hull-House. The association's major goal was to instruct kindergarten teachers in child socialization methods. Gyles hoped kindergarten teachers too would use Swedish gymnastics to identify and correct their students' physical handicaps.

[excerpted from] Susan R. Schwendener, "Rose Marie Gyles," in Women Building Chicago 1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Rima Lunin Schultz and Adele Hast (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001): 335-7.

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