Mooresville High School Gymnasium Dedication (1920)

Mooresville High School's gymnasium was dedicated 100 years ago today (on December 31, 1920), when the MHS boys basketball team played against Center Grove, and the Monrovia girls basketball team played against Center Grove.

Learn more about the century-old gymnasium from this superb handout by Susan Haynes, communications director for the Mooresville Consolidated School Corporation.  We have another blog post that explains where MHS basketball games were played before the gymnasium was built.

Martinsville Daily Reporter, Friday, December 31, 1920, page 4

Click the image below to read an article about the gymnasium in the Indianapolis News, January 1, 1921, page 13.

Click (Above) to Enlarge

The Library's 2005 Addition Construction Project

In case you missed it 12 years ago, here's a video of construction of the library's 2005 addition, which was dedicated on January 27, 2006, exactly 90 years after the MPL's Carnegie building was dedicated.

MPL Dedication, January 27, 2006 Video,

by Mooresville Public Library

 

Thanks to Beth Hensley, MPL volunteer extraordinaire (whom we call "The Decorinator"), and her late husband, Maurice Hensley, for donating an original DVD released at the 2006 dedication ceremony, which is now part of our permanent Indiana Room reference collection.

Paul Hadley/Indiana State Flag Historical Marker Dedication

The Paul Hadley/Indiana State Flag historical marker dedication ceremony was held this morning (Saturday, August 6, 2016) in downtown Mooresville, Indiana.  Here are a few photos from the event.  Click the photos below to enlarge.

 

The new historical marker awaiting its unveiling

Dave Nash, chairperson, Celebrate Mooresville,

welcomes the audience

Casey Pfeiffer, historical marker program manager, Indiana Historical Bureau,

spoke about the public process used to establish historical markers

(and this marker particularly)

Dave Nash spoke about honoring Paul Hadley

Lois Huntington, State Regent, Indiana Daughters of the American Revolution,

spoke about the Indiana State Flag's legacy

 Bud Swisher, Healthier Morgan County, spoke about

personal memories of Paul Hadley and

designing the Indiana State Flag

  

Janice Bolinger, Honorary State Regent,

Indiana Daughters of the American Revolution,

spoke about the meaning of the Indiana State Flag's symbols

and the historical mysteries surrounding the flag

The unveiling!

The new historical marker!

The front side of the new historical marker

 

The rear side of the new historical marker

At the beginning of the ceremony, Mooresville Boy Scout Troop 231 honor color guard presented the colors--first, the American flag, then the Hoosier flag.

 

Also on display at the dedication ceremony was the official Mooresville town banner, designed in 1974 by MPL director Bonita Marley.  The town flag is on permanent display in the MPL Indiana Room.

A nice crowd was on hand for the dedication. The marker is located in Hadley Memorial Park in downtown Mooresville (on the northeast corner of the intersection of Main and Indiana Streets). The marker site was also the location of Samuel Moore's general mercantile store, which was the first wood-frame business built in Mooresville (Moore founded the town in 1824).

MPL treasurer Steve Saucerman speaks with

Mooresville Academy museum director/historian Julie Kyle-Lee

 MPL president Lynn Adams (right)

Learn more about the history of the Indiana State Flag and Paul Hadley at: 

• Poletika, Nicole.  "'A Permanent Emblem of Its Own:'  The Indiana State Flag & Its Designer."   Indiana History Blog, January 11, 2017.  Indiana Historical Bureau of the Indiana State Library.  (Click here to access the blog article.)

A Century of Dedication

One hundred years ago today (January 27, 1916), Mooresville Public Library was dedicated. Click the images below to enlarge.

Front page of the Mooresville Times, Friday, January 28, 1916

Easier-to-read PDF version of newspaper article is available

Mooresville Public Library (the "Carnegie building") (1916)

(Photo by J. P. Calvert)

The 1916 library building was constructed thanks to a $10,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation.  To give that some perspective, here's what the library purchased in 2011 with a $10,000 LSTA (Library Services & Technology Act) grant from the Indiana State Library.

ScanPro 2000 Digital Microfilm Scanner/Reader

That $10,000 grant almost covered the cost of the microfilm scanner (on the left in the above photo).  The library was required under the terms of the grant to put-up about $2,000 more to buy the unit; then the library had to purchase a computer and monitor separately (another $3,000 or so).  Clearly, ten grand doesn't go as far as it did a century ago.

Of course, inflation must be factored into the valuation of the U.S. dollar.  In 2016 dollars, the construction cost of the 1916 facility ($10,000) would be equivalent to $217,533.03 today.  So we can't really compare a digital scanner purchase five years ago with an entire new library building 100 years ago.  But it's amazing how much inflation there has been since Mooresville's Carnegie library was brand new.

Rather than recount MPL's entire history here, we can direct you to our online handouts that give all the details.

• MPL History
• PDF version of the Mooresville Times article (January 28, 1916)

It has been a century of dedicated public service at your library.  We hope to continue to serve our community for centuries to come.