YMCA of Metropolitan Chattanooga

Specialties

At the Y, community is our cause. As an organziation, we’ve been working for nearly 160 years to bring communities together. As a local Y, we bring people of all backgrounds together to bridge the gaps in our community. We want to give our community, and the people in it, the opportunity to grow and thrive. We’re strengthening the foundation of our community one child, one family, one individual at a time.

History

Established in 1874.

The YMCA was organized in London, England in 1844 when George Williams a young store clerk of strong faith and spirituality persuaded twelve other young men to get together regularly for Bible study and prayer. A few years later, retired Boston sea captain Thomas Valentine Sullivan, working as a marine missionary Y in America at the Old South Church in Boston, Massachusetts on December 29, 1851. In 1853, the first YMCA for blacks was founded in Washington D.C. by Anthony Bowen, a freed slave. The YMCA of Chattanooga was organized in 1874 and its first meeting place was a room at 735 E. Market Street.

The James A. Henry Y began as the 9^th Street YMCA of Chattanooga and was dedicated on Tuesday, October 8, 1902 and the featured speaker was Booker T. Washington. In 1929 the same year in which the Stock Market crashed, the YMCA rented space at 302 E. 9^th Street (at the corner of Ninth and Houston Street) which included a gym, meeting room, reading rooms, locker and shower facilities. By t