The Oklahoma City YMCA goes back to the Land Run days when a small group of men gathered at the post office in May 1889 to form a new chapter, one that quickly numbered over 100 by the end of the year. Over the next decade and a half, membership continued to grow as rapidly as the city itself, which resulted in the Y moving from smaller rented spaces to increasingly larger ones every few years. With all of this moving, it was quite clear that the YMCA needed its own building, but several fund raising efforts failed to produce enough money to buy a piece of valuable downtown land and construct their quarters. So, the YMCA continued to rent and tolerate frustrating landlords, one of whom refused to let the organization use the exercise equipment they had installed in a second-floor space because the noise of men using it bothered the other tenants.
(Photo by Mike Brown)