Y.M.C.A. at North Carolina State College, Raleigh, N.C.
This week’s Flashback Friday postcard depicts the old YMCA building on the NC State University campus.
The YMCA was built in 1913 with partial funding from oil tycoon and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller.
The Y.M.C.A. is the center of social life of the College. Music entertainments etc. are held in this building.
The message on the card, written in a beautiful cursive hand, was mailed in January 1931 by G. Wilder Fort, Poultry Department, State Hospital (i.e. Dorothea Dix).
Many thanks for your kind Christmas Greetings etc. May God bless you & your good family in the year 1931.
The YMCA building was the first student union presence on the NC State campus.
[It] served as a center for social and religious events on campus. After the Student Union was built in the early 1950s and Danforth Chapel was added to the YMCA, the building enhanced its religious activities and was renamed the King Religious Center in 1956, after E. S. King, who served as president of the YMCA from 1919 until 1955.
–Â Courtesy NCSU Libraries Special Collections Research Center
The building was demolished in 1975, and Kamphoefner Hall was built on the site in 1978.
Author’s personal note:
The addressee on this postcard, Henry G. Early, was my grandfather. He was head of the Poultry Department at Baptist Orphanage in Thomasville, NC from 1925 until 1960. He and my grandmother were also foster parents to about a dozen boys resident in one of the ‘cottages’ on the orphanage campus. I often stayed a week or two with them during the summers when I was a boy. I have many fond memories of the times I spent there.
Founded in 1885, Baptist Orphanage was later renamed the Mills Home, and is now a part of the umbrella organization Baptist Children’s Homes of North Carolina. Today, the Michell House Museum, the oldest remaining cottage on the former orphanage campus preserves the legacy of the early efforts of North Carolina Baptists to protect and serve children at risk.
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11/05/2011
ON AUGUST 11,1949 I WAS GOING INTO THE US AIR FORCE.. I TOOK THE RE-ENLISTMENT PHYSICAL IN THE “ATTIC” OF THE POST OFFICE… I WAS ALMOST 22 YEARS OLD.. I HAD ALREADY SERVED IN THE US NAVY.. THE S/SGT WAS TOLD THAT MY BLOOD PRESSURE WAS TOO HIGH.. THE SGT. TOLD THE DOCTOR THAT I WAS PRIOR SERVICE AND JUST ABOUT HAD TO LET BACK IN SERVICE FOR MY EXPERIENCE.. THEY CONFERRED AND THE SGT. TOLD ME TO GO HOME, TAKE A DOSE OF EPSON SALTS AND COME BACK THE NEXT MORNING.. I LIVED OUT THE LOUISBURG ROAD AALMOST TO THE NEUSE RIVER.. I DID NOT WANT TO GO BACK THER… SO I WENT OUT TO STATE COLLEGE AND SLEPT ON A LEATHER SOFA JUST TO THE RIGHT INSIDE THE ENTRANCE TO THIS BUILDING… NO ONE SAID A THING AND I WENT BACK DOWNTOWN THE NEXT MORNING AND WAS ACCEPTED AND SWORN IN TO THE USAF AND WAS SOON ON MY WAY TO LACKLAND AFB IN TEXAS FOR A TWO WEEK “REFRESHER” COURSE AND THEN WENT TO SCOTT AFB IN ILLINOIS FOR RADIO REPAIR SCHOOL.. I WAS A VERY HAPPY YOUNG MAN !!
11/08/2011
Claude — Thanks for sharing with our readers your military experiences and your personal connection with the old campus YMCA from so long ago!
01/06/2014
Love these old post cards!