1915
Women's Tennis

Courts

Four female students are playing tennis on the courts located between New Cottage and South Sixth Street. The sidewalk between the Women's Campus and South Sixth Street is in the foreground. The rear of Bucknell Hall is barely visible at the far right in the photograph.

When completed in 1905, New Cottage provided rooms for sixty students. Four recitation rooms and eleven music rooms were located in the basement. The attic of the building contained a gymnasium called the Calisthenium, which was 36 feet wide and 128 feet long and in 1915 was “…. furnished with Indian clubs, dumb bells, wands, rings, hoops, guns, wall pulleys, parallel bars, etc….” The exercises for the women were designed to “…. develop grace and strength.” During the Winter Term, all resident students in the Institute, except College Juniors and Seniors, were required to spend “two hours a week in the Gymnasium” unless excused “…. by order of the Director of Gymnastics.”

Women were becoming more interested in physical activates in the early decades of the Twentieth Century. In 1913, members of the Bucknell College for Women presented a petition to the Trustees "….requesting better facilities for physical culture, and employment of a trained instructor." The same year, the Bucknell Alumnae Association requested that a woman graduate be placed on the Board of Trustees.

"...furnished with Indian clubs..." and the other quotations in this paragraph, CAT '14-'15, p. 179

"...requesting better facilities..." BT '82-20, p. 291 (6/17/1913)

The major source for the information on this page is the Minutes of the Board of Trustees of Bucknell University, 1882-1920 (BT '82-'20). Additional sources are the Bucknell University Bulletin (Fourteenth Series, January 1915, No. 4) Catalogue 1914-1915 (CAT '14-'15) and the Bucknell Uinversity Bulletin (Fifteenth Series, January1916, No. 4) Catalog 1915-1916 (CAT '15-'16).