Manly Gymnasium Gate
About this tag
The inscription raises three excellent questions at once: Why is the gym manly? Who was Manly? And where did the gym go? “Manly” was actually the name of a junior high school that once occupied this site, and the wrought-iron gate really did lead toward its gymnasium. Historic records suggest even the gate had already been moved once within the school grounds. The school and gym are gone, leaving this ornate entrance behind with almost none of the context that once made it ordinary. It is less a gate to nowhere than a surviving punctuation mark from a vanished campus.