RECREATION BOWL, GASTONIA'S FIRST BOWLING ALLEY

       The Sports Center, located at 213 East Main Avenue in Downtown Gastonia, has been a fixture in the local sports scene for four generations. Many viewers of this website have memories of going there to see “Mr. Bradshaw” for uniforms, equipment, and information. It was, as it still is, a colorful and exciting place, eliciting thoughts of action, teamwork, and competition. It is a rare gem, a unique surviving “legitimate” business that once stood along with such neighbors as Ladd Seafood next door (where the Bradley Station transit center is now located), and Pep Boys, Gettys Hardware, and Kirby Pianos across the street. 

       Awhile back, I started thinking about The Sports Center in connection with misty 60+ year-old memories of my dad taking me to a bowling establishment that was once located in the same building. That is when I first heard the word “duckpins” used, as the alley we played on featured the smaller pins than traditional “tenpins” and a smaller ball with no finger holes. Any place I went with Dad was an adventure, so my experience at the exciting and noisy “Recreation Bowl,” as the place was named, became indelibly etched into my favorite remembrances. 

       Back in 2008, when I was walking around Main Avenue with my 1972 Minolta SRT 101 35mm camera, looking for tiny pieces of Gastonia’s built history that had theretofore escaped capture, the bowling memory popped into my head as I passed The Sports Center. I entered the building, and, after asking about the bowling alley, an employee directed me to my right, where I found what were unmistakably bowling lanes. The space where the ball return had once been located had been filled with darker wood, and the shiny parallel edge-grain boards ran from where I was standing to a wall, beyond which (through an open door) I could see them continue on to an imagined terminus where once pins had stood and pin boys had perched.

       I snapped a picture, thanked the employee, and exited back onto the sidewalk of Main Avenue. In time, I took up the remainder of the film roll and had it developed. The negatives and prints resided in their envelope in a stack of others in my study. 

       Fourteen years passed. 

       On my website, I had, from the beginning, set out to locate and record obscure stories of Old Gastonia. On a recent Friday, after lunch in town with two dear old Scoutmaster friends, I set out to unearth the story that I thought might exist regarding the long-forgotten Recreation Bowl.

       I was not disappointed.

   With the enthusiastic assistance of “Mr. Bradshaw’s” son Robert and grandson John (J.R. II), I was able to get the story, and here it is:

       In 1946, Gastonians John K. “Buddy” Lewis, Lawrence Columbus “Crash” Davis, and John Robert (J.R.) Bradshaw opened Gastonia’s first bowling alley, “Recreation Bowl,” on East Main Avenue to take advantage of the growing interest in the sport of bowling in the US after World War II. Lewis and Bradshaw had been childhood friends. All three were former baseball players who had grown up in Gastonia. Lewis had a long and illustrious career with the Washington Senators (interrupted by service with the Army Air Corps as a transport pilot), Davis (whose nickname came from a collision with another teammate when he was 14 attempting to catch a fly ball) played for the Philadelphia Athletics before the war and minor league teams after service, and Bradshaw who was active with textile and independent teams. 

       The six-lane bowling establishment caught on, and postwar Gastonia embraced the wildly-popular sport. Soon teams were formed, and leagues were organized including industrial, business, women, and children. Eventually the facility expanded to ten lanes featuring duckpins and traditional tenpins. While both living in Washington DC, Lewis and Bradshaw were introduced to duckpin bowling, which had originated in the Baltimore-DC area. (In duckpins, the player rolls three times rather than two as in tenpins.)

       From the beginning, Lewis and Davis were somewhat silent partners, with Bradshaw running the day-to-day business affairs of the bowling alley. In addition to managing and maintaining Recreation Bowl, he also operated a sporting goods store in another part of the building. (This sideline would eventually become The Sports Center that we know today.) 

J.R. Bradshaw soon bought out Crash Davis’ share of the business with Lewis remaining part of both ventures until around the mid-1950s. Lewis’ main business, Lewis Ford, remained a Second Avenue landmark (across from Central School) until it moved east to former Gastonia Country Club property and was sold to Earl Tindol. 

       By 1958, according to a February 13 article by Garland Atkins in the Gastonia Gazette, Recreation Bowl had become the “noisiest, shout’nest, gayest place in town at night” as teams gathered for league play in the evenings after work. Action was provided not only by the bowlers but also by the “pin boys” at the other end of the lane. Pin boys were young men who were employed to set up the pins and roll the ball back on the ball return. 

       Automatic pin-setters were installed in March 1959 just as construction had begun on a 40-lane bowling center at the eastern city limits. The Gastonia Country Club, seeing its plans to expand the club’s 9-hole golf course to 18 stymied by the approach of business and residential development, relocated and sold the property to Gastonia businessman Glen Powell. Powell planned to develop the highway frontage into a shopping center and remainder to be divided into restricted residential lots. 

       He negotiated with a Florida company, Major League Lanes, Inc. to occupy a 35,000-square foot facility he would develop. The Gastonia Major League Lanes would be equipped with the most modern equipment available to the sport, including automatic pin-spotters, a full-service restaurant, a child care facility, and free parking for 300 cars. For a time, it would be the largest venue of its kind in North Carolina. It opened with great fanfare, and pages of the Gazette were filled with congratulatory ads

       Shortly after the new bowling center opened, the Gazetteasked Billy Jimison, who was managing Recreation Bowl at that time (as Bradshaw was giving more attention to the sporting goods end of the business), if the pioneer bowling alley would close. His response indicated that, initially, demand for bowling venues far exceeded supply, for he remarked that business was up 30% and that some bowlers were going to Charlotte to bowl. 

       But the inexorable eastward pull of postwar Gastonia development could not be resisted forever, and by 1970, the pioneer Recreation Bowl had quietly disappeared. The Sports Center, however, has survived the vicissitudes and controversies of Downtown existence, carving out for itself a unique niche in this city whose future finally is brightening.

       If some quiet afternoon you find yourself walking down the 200th block of East Main Avenue, you might hear the faint echo of a rumble, crash, and cheer emanating from this place of long ago delight.