What Will It Contain

WHAT WILL IT CONTAIN

The New Y. M. C. A. Building for Ann Arbor

SOME PLANS FOR IT

Different Rooms Needed for the Work and Which will Probably be Provided for

A great deal of interest is being shown by the citizens in the new Y. M. C. A. building to be erected on the association property on Fourth avenue opposite the court house. It is hoped that when the association does build it will make ample provision for the growth and extension of its work which may naturally be expected and which the experience of other cities shows will surely come. Ann Arbor should have a building that will accommodate 700 to 1,000 members besides transients and visitors.

It will have a gymnasium for the building up of our young men physically, equipped with dumbbells, Indian clubs, chest weights, horizontal and parallel bars, vaulting bucks and other necessary apparatus, with a good running track above. There will also be a place here for recreative games like basket ball, hand ball and volley ball. Adjoining the gymnasium should be a room for the Fencing club, already organized, and other individual exercises. Below the gymnasium will be the locker room and a number of good baths.

The parlors will be easily accessible, well furnished and so cozy and home-like as to cheer the most despondent and home-sick. Here the members of the association can meet strangers and give them the glad hand, invite in and entertain for an evening their friends and acquaintances, and hold receptions and socials.

There will also be game rooms with all kinds of ordinary parlor games, together with shuffleboard, ping pong, balleto, etc. which will vie in attractiveness with any billiard hall in the city.

The reading rooms and library should have the more quiet corner of the building.

At the secretary's office will be found a bureau of general information, a boarding house register and employment bureau.

On the floor above rooms will be provided for the night school. Accommodations should be had for at least 250 students. The classes in arithmetic, grammar, algebra, etc., will need a room with ample blackboard space, penmanship and bookkeeping a room with large tables, and mechanical drawing an equipment appropriate to its work. Still another room will be needed by the Current Topic club and other clubs that may be organized, like a camera club, good literature club, etc., and also a music room, where rehearsals of the orchestra, mandolin club and male chorus may be held without disturbing other classes.

Bible classes and Bible study clubs can utilize the regular class rooms. A larger room, however, will be needed for gospel meetings, lectures, addresses, musical and literary programs and other entertainments.

For the boys there should be separate rooms with a separate entrance, capable of taking care of 250 boys. Over 100 are frequenting the association rooms now. But work for boys and for young men can never be carried on in the same rooms with satisfaction to either, nor with profit.

A very popular feature in the more recent association buildings are the dormitories. Young men away from home find these a great boon. In the basement are usually located a restaurant, lunch counter and barber shop. The first floor is reserved for store or office rooms in order to produce a revenue to help meet the running expenses of the building.

This, in general outline, is such a building as Ann Arbor needs and should have. The work done in such a building will leave its stamp upon the great majority of the young men who grow up in, and move to, Ann Arbor for the next 50 years. Is it not worth every cent it will cost?