Gulick, Luther Halsey (MS 503)

Finding Aid | Digital images and documents

Luther Halsey Gulick This collection documents the work of Luther Halsey Gulick (1865-1918) who was a pioneer and national leader in health and physical education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. From 1887 to 1900 Gulick helped establish and supervise the Physical Department at the International YMCA Training School (now Springfield College). Gulick moved to New York City in 1900, where he worked at the Pratt Institute High School and Russell Sage Foundation. Gulick and his wife Charlotte later founded the Camp Fire Girls. There are reports, correspondence, and essays related to the Camp Fire Girls within the collection. Much of the material in the collection covers Gulick’s professional career in New York City, especially the 1900-1912 period. There are four scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and other materials by and about Gulick dating from those years. Additionally, there is a scrapbook about Dio Lewis, a fellow physical educator, that Gulick created, and there are two bound volumes of outgoing correspondence from the Triangle Publishing Company, which Gulick helped establish at Springfield College in the early 1890s. A large portion of the collection comprises lectures and articles, both published and unpublished, that Gulick wrote between 1897 and 1912. These writings concern a broad spectrum of topics, including physical education, play, hygiene and health, gender roles, camping, folk dancing, and amateur athletics. Also included are correspondence—both incoming and outgoing—as well as minutes, notes, and other records of several of the national organizations in which Gulick was a leader, including the American Academy of Physical Education, the Athletic League of YMCAs of North America, and the Amateur Athletic Union.