The YMCA Comes to Kankakee

The Kankakee YMCA Marching Squad posed for this group photo in the building’s gymnasium in 1910. (Kankakee County Museum Photo Archive)

By Jack KlaseyMarch 1, 2025

On Monday, February 18, 1907, at the end of a highly successful six-week-long revival meeting in Kankakee, charismatic evangelist Billy Sunday dedicated his final preaching session as a fundraiser for erecting a YMCA building in the city.

Sunday, a former professional baseball player who experienced a religious conversion and gave up drinking, gambling, and swearing, credited the Young Men’s Christian Association with an important role in his conversion. “If it had not been for the YMCA, I probably would not have been able to help you,” he told a large crowd attending the service. “I’m helping you because it helped me. It helped in laying the very foundations of my Christian character.”

The dynamic preacher challenged his audience with the question, “How much are you willing to give to the YMCA tonight?” The crowd responded to Billy Sunday’s appeal by pledging $10,200, in amounts ranging from $2 to $500. (In 2025 terms, $10,200 would be equivalent to $341,000.)

Although the goal of the 1907 fundraising effort was to construct a building designed specifically for the YMCA’s needs, the organization had been active in Kankakee for more than a dozen years. “Movement to Start a YMCA in Kankakee” was a small headline in the May 4, 1894, edition of the Kankakee Weekly Democrat, reporting on an event held April 29 in most of the city‘s Protestant churches. “Yesterday will be set down in the memory of a great many young men as a red-letter day. The services…were devoted to the religious interests of the young men….Most of the time was spent in talking over the work of the YMCA,” the article noted. “The general sentiment seemed to be in favor of a YMCA being inaugurated in Kankakee.”

A month later, the Democrat reported on a May 26 meeting involving a state YMCA official and local church representatives. “A.M. Bruner, the state financial secretary…was in the city last night to give his plans and advise as to the best methods to be pursued in obtaining a branch organization of the YMCA in this city.”

To cover the costs of establishing a local YMCA, Bruner told the local men, it would be “necessary to have $2,000 subscribed in money and a membership of 200 at $5 per year.” The funds would be used to pay the salary of a secretary (director), rent space in a downtown building, pay utility costs, and provide equipment for a gymnasium and a bathroom (with both tubs and showers), books and periodicals for a reading room, and a large room for afternoon meetings.

In the summer of 1894, the YMCA rented the third floor of the Swannell Building on the southeast corner of Schuyler Avenue and Court Street, and began remodeling the space to accommodate the gymnasium, bathrooms, and other facilities. On September 19, the Democrat announced, “By this time, the YMCA rooms are fully opened.” Visitors toured the facilities, which were decorated with large plants and flowers; all were invited to “partake of the free lemonade, which was served to all who wished it.”

Within four years, the organization outgrew the Swannell Building facilities, relocating one block to the east. The YMCA moved into the second and third floors of a new building, erected in 1898 by Kankakee hardware merchant Lawrence Babst. It was located on the north side of Court Street, just west of Dearborn Avenue. During the summer months of 1897 and 1898, the YMCA also operated “Athletic Park” in what is now Kankakee’s Beckman Park. The facility, which included a baseball diamond and a bicycle racing track, proved too costly for the YMCA to operate, and closed in fall, 1898.

Among the youngsters who were drawn to the YMCA’s gymnasium and other facilities in the Babst Building was eight-year-old Joseph William “Joie” Ray. Programs offered at the YMCA helped the youngster recover from health problems and introduced him to competitive running. As a teenager, Ray regularly raced (and beat) a Kankakee trolleycar on its run from Electric Park to downtown Kankakee. During his 18-year career, Joie Ray set world records in the mile, and competed in three Olympics.

By 1905, it became obvious that the YMCA had outgrown the Babst Building facilities; it was time for the organization to erect a modern building of its own. A fundraising drive was mounted in early 1906, and a site for the building was acquired for $13,000. The site, at Harrison Avenue and Court Street, was used in 1907 for the temporary wooden “Tabernacle” building where Billy Sunday’s revival meetings were held.

Buoyed by the $10,200 raised at the Billy Sunday revival, and a $10,000 donation by Mrs. S. B. Burchard, the building fund reached $37,500 toward its goal of $65,000 on February 19, 1907. YMCA Secretary J.M. Davis told the Kankakee Democrat, “That work on the new YMCA building will be commenced during the coming spring is now practically assured.”

On August 27, 1907, the newspaper reported, “The excavation for the new YMCA building is almost entirely finished, and the contractors are beginning to make ready to construct the cement floor and walls.” Erecting the new, three-story stone building would take a full year: the YMCA would officially relocate from the Babst Building to its new home on September 14, 1908.

When the facility formally opened on October 9, “Between six and seven hundred people…enjoyed a pleasant evening as the guests of the members,” the Kankakee Daily Republican reported. The visitors viewed a swimming pool and bowling alleys on the basement level, and on the first floor, a reception room, a reading room, and a large gymnasium with a running track.

The second and third floors were left unfinished, but were planned for later development as dormitories with affordable sleeping quarters for 50 to 60 young men. The room rental fees would provide a source of income for the YMCA.

Shortly after the new YMCA opened in late 1908, the vacant second floor was rented out to serve as a temporary Kankakee County Courthouse. (The county’s 1873 courthouse was demolished in 1909, and the current courthouse was erected on the same site, opening in 1912.) Ten years later, in 1918, the YMCA and the adjoining Masonic Temple were pressed into service as temporary hospitals during a nationwide flu epidemic.

The second floor of the building found a happier use during the 1940s and early 1950s when a former cafeteria on that floor was converted to a teen clubroom with a nautical theme, called the “Crow’s Nest.” A Kankakee Republican-News article on December 10, 1942, described the clubroom as “a place where they (local teenagers) can go on weekends to enjoy fellowship with other people of their own age and interests.”

By the early 1960s, it became apparent that the YMCA had once again outgrown its facilities. A successful fundraising campaign in 1966 brought in $1.3 million; the large, modern Kankakee YMCA facility at 1075 N. Kennedy Drive opened its doors in May 1968. The Harrison Avenue building that had served “Y” members for nearly 60 years closed its doors after a final activity (a co-ed swim class) on May 29, 1968. Several months later, the building on Harrison was demolished. Today, it is a small parking lot.

Jack Klasey is a former Journal reporter and a retired publishing executive. He can be contacted at jwklasey@comcast.net.