“Rock Gym” • Pflugerville

“Rock Gym” • Pflugerville

Written by Pam Stephenson Thursday, 03 July 2008

The old Pflugerville Gym, known by locals as the “Rock Gym,” has been a landmark in Pflugerville since it was built in 1934-35, during the Great Depression.

Although it is widely believed to have been a project of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Rock Gym was actually built by the Work Projects Administration, according to long-time resident Willard Pfluger. He said that although the project to build the Rock Gym was started by the WPA, it was completed by “local boys.”

“The government paid for the majority of it, but ran out of funding, so many of the local boys donated their time to finish the project,” Pfluger said.

The WPA and the CCC were established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a relief effort during the Depression, providing subsistence for families. The WPA employed people of all races and both sexes, with wages in Texas ranging from $45 to $75 per month. The CCC worked on the farms to promote soil conservation, while the WPA was responsible for constructing public buildings and providing leisure activities for groups throughout the year. The Rock Gym was one of the more than 4,300 new school buildings the WPA built in the United States.

The Rock Gym was built just west of the “red brick school,” which housed elementary through high school grades and was located on the current site of Theodor Timmerman Elementary School. Damaged by a tornado in 1957, the red brick building was razed, and a new school was built in 1959.

“Before the Rock Gym was built, we only had an outside court on the north side of the school,” recalled Pfluger, who played basketball in the Rock Gym during high school.

Pflugerville resident Charles Kuempel played basketball in the gym in the mid-1940s and coached there in the 1950s and 1960s.

“On the east side of the gym was a clay basketball court, frequently used for practice,” Kuempel said. “Round Rock did not have a gym, so they would come to Pflugerville to practice and play their games in the Rock Gym.”

“In addition to boys and girls basketball games, the girls played volleyball there. It was also the site of band concerts and Halloween carnivals,” said Gladys Weiss, who played there in the early 1950s. “It was cold in there, and they had a potbelly stove in the corner to heat the building. The floor had some dead spots, and the home team took advantage of this knowledge when playing on the courts in the gym.”

Gloria Kuempel, Charles’ wife, said the roof frequently leaked from kids shooting pigeons on the roof.

“The leaky roof caused the soft spots in the floor of the gym,” she said.

Owned by the Pflugerville Independent School District, the gym will be the subject of a committee assigned to evaluate its future use.

“It has a new roof and the windows have been fixed, but it still has soft spots in the floor, which needs to be shored up,” said Randy Reese, PISD assistant superintendent of community relations. “The restrooms need fixing and updating before the gym can be used again by the public.”

The Rock Gym remains an important part of Pflugerville’s history, appearing today just as it did more than 70 years ago.