Read time: 4 min.

I love basketball and probably always will. Here in Indiana, though, it’s a rough time to be fan since the Pacers are off to such a sluggish start thanks to injuries and the Fever aren’t back yet. I’m a fair-weather fan to be sure, but what I like most about basketball is the history behind my state’s zealous participation in it. A trip to Richmond the other day led me past the old gymnasium in Economy, which recently was adorned with an unbelievable mural.

The Economy Gym sits along Poplar Street just a couple doors north of US-35. The wood-frame gymnasium went up in 1922¹, and it didn’t take long for it to host some home-grown drama: that same year, Fountain City won the very first Economy Invitational after the hometown Cardinals bowed out in the semifinals, falling 25–14².

The gym is unbelievably small. It’s so small, in fact, that its court stretches just sixty-one feet from end to end. On the east side, the baseline’s the wall; on the west, the stage doubles as the out-of-bounds line. Anyone driving in for a layup had to know exactly what they were doing! Still, the pint-sized hardwood served as home court for the Economy Cardinals until 1957, when the team shifted its games to nearby Williamsburg³. The building even pulled double duty from 1947 to 1955, hosting an independent traveling squad known as the Economy Royals⁴.

The school in Economy merged with Hagerstown in 1962⁵, but the little gym kept busy by serving elementary students right up until the old Economy High School shut its doors for good in 1971. The school itself came down two years later, but the standalone gym survived⁶. It’s still alive with intramural leagues today! For a town of just 145 people, the pride in this scrappy old building is unmistakable.

That pride became impossible to miss in the summer of 2024, when artist Carl Leck of Greenfield transformed the gym’s facade as part of the Wayne County murals project under the Hoosier Enduring Legacy Program. His work spills across the front of the building: a bold Cardinal perched atop a basketball, a red-and-white Economy pennant, the 1952 Wayne County championship trophy, an old-school varsity “E,” a pair of ticket stubs, and a flowing cursive “Royals” scripted across the ball. The result is a layered, hyper-realistic mural that gives the old gym a vibrant presence in a town where little else is going on⁷.

Today, the Economy Gym stands as more than a relic of small-town basketball. Outside, the new mural brings that history roaring back in color, celebrating every team, every season, every story this little gym has carried for more than a century. In a town as small as Economy, a building like this isn’t just historic. Instead, it’s a touchstone as testament to local pride that refuses to fade.

Sources Cited
1 Engle, B. (1998, April 27). The paint goes on. The Richmond Palladium-Item. P. 3. 
2 Eades, R.C. (1922, December 24). Fountain City Seconds Win Invitational Meet In Economy Gymnasium. 
3 Neddenriep, K. (2010). Historic Hoosier Gyms: discovering bygone basketball landmarks. The History Press [Charleston]. Book. 
4 Neddenriep, K. (2025, July 28). LOST GYMS: ‘Peanut Heaven’ is gone but memories of Economy basketball still strong in 1922 gym. The Indianapolis Star. Web. Retrieved Novembre 8, 2025. 
5 New School Bus Plan Adopted At Hagerstown To Trim Costs (1963, March 20). The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 7. 
6 Truitt, J. (2019, April 12). What happened to Wayne County’s old high schools? The Richmond Palladium-Item. Web. Retrieved May 12, 2024. 
7 (See footnote 3).