NORTHWEST HISTORY - Others discovered body building long before football coaches

Boys exercising at Hiawatha Playfield, 1911. Don Sherwood Parks History Collection, Seattle Municipal Archives.

By OS staff

The popularity of gymnasiums and weight rooms in America today is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the craze began right after the Civil War, when men in cities throughout the country flocked daily to the nearest gym for exercise, calisthenics and weight training.

They exercised on mats and bars, and with dumbbells and Indian clubs, to increase their upper-body strength, and worked on leg-lunging routines for the lower body.

At that time, physical training was thoroughly linked with moral values. Such groups as the Boy Scouts of America and the YMCA, along with popular youth magazines, all encouraged exercise. It was believed that it would develop not only strong but also patriotic young men.

The “Boy Scout Handbook” went one step further and correlated physique with manliness. Colleges also adopted this attitude, resulting in the proliferation of collegiate sports programs by the late 1800s. Working class men also headed for the gym when there was one in the neighborhood.

The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) was responsible for the first gymnasium in the Pacific Northwest. On March 31, 1868, Mr. E.E. Quackenbush opened the first one of the region in Portland. Devoting itself to what it called “Muscular Christianity,” it allowed the participants to work off aggressions, develop their strength, and show off some power in the harmless setting.

Seattle’s first YMCA was founded in 1876. Other YMCAs became a very important part of the sporting life of the Northwest, and by 1900, there were over 20 of them in Oregon and Washington. They did not have a monopoly on gymnastic activities, however.

The German turnverein was a gymnastics organization popular in many American cities, including Tacoma, Seattle and Portland. It was brought to the Northwest in the mid-19th century by German immigrants, and became a combination lodge and athletic club. The Seattle “Turners” built a large hall with a gymnasium in 1886, filling it with dumbbells, Indian clubs, vaulting horses and other body building equipment.

Private gymnasiums were also established throughout the region. Those in Seattle were representative. Clubs were formed, such as the Seattle Athletic Club, which opened in 1870. It established a fine athletic facility, popular with its prosperous members. Those less well-to-do could go to Austin and Freed’s Gymnasium on the corner of Second and Spring streets for physical training, boxing, wrestling and weight reducing. After a couple of years, Freed sold out to a man named Salt. Austin and Salt’s Seattle School of Physical Culture, Inc. was open for physical activities on First Avenue until the Depression.

Bodybuilding for its own sake was a recognizable activity by the late 19th century. Strong men such as Eugene Sandow toured the country, thrilling audiences with his performances of strength. His posing as much as his feats, however, attracted the attention of the crowd. His bulging biceps and swelling pectorals caused nearly every American male who saw him to want to develop in the same way.

Although Sandow never made it to the Pacific Northwest, his influence was felt here. In turn-of-the-century Seattle, Doc Shaughnessy operated a gym in one of the toughest neighborhoods. His ad for his “physical culture studio” claimed he would “Remove Fat Fast from Fighters and Men under Forty.” (It continued, “For Those Over Forty, I’ll Just Try.”)

The colleges of the region were not neglecting physical activity. Charles Vander Veer, the Instructor in Physical Culture and Hygiene at the University of Washington, developed some of the first classes in bodybuilding at that institution, encouraging exercise by offering rewards. He even went so far as to publish the average physical measurements of male students in the campus newspaper. (Vander Veer also took the almost unheard of step of offering some of his physical training exercises to coeds.)

Bodybuilding continued to grow in popularity throughout the region, with everyone from college students to lumberjacks. Publications of the early 1900s accepted amateur photographs from bodybuilders eager to show off their muscles to the rest of the country.

Sam Loprinzi on the June, 1946 cover of Strength and Health magazine. The Portland resident was named “Most Muscular Man in America” that year.

In the 1930s, two of these men gained an international reputation. Maurice Jones, “the Vancouver Hercules,” was a young man from British Columbia. With his 19-inch arms and 52-inch chest, he had a physique impressive in any company. To earn a living, he entered the field of professional wrestling and came home after a tour of Europe with a well-deserved international reputation.

In Portland, Sam Loprinzi began his bodybuilding after a visit to the Hippodrome Theater in 1927 to watch a strong man perform. By 1934, he had won the Northwestern Weight Lifting Championship and in 1946 was declared the “Most Muscular Man in America.”