Warren Lincoln Travis began his strongman career as the “Brooklyn Strong Boy,” but quickly graduated to circuses and vaudeville and also worked long stints at Coney Island. Travis was America’s most famous strongman in the early years of the twentieth century. Most other touring professionals of the era were Europeans or Canadians – Sandow, the...
Sigmund Klein was one of the most fascinating, and indeed, successful physical culturists of the 1920s and 1930s. Operating a gym in New York, the same gym run by his father in law, Professor Atilla, Klein’s unique position in the fitness industry made him the envy of many. Not only was he incredibly strong and...
In June 1911, shortly after Joe Greenstein arrived in Houston, Texas, he resumed a wrestling career that had been interrupted in his native Poland when rising anti-Semitism drove him to join relatives in America. In 1914, however, a friend shot him between the eyes and set him on a different path. As the story goes,...
In 1989, Joe Weider commissioned Lorenzo Ghiglieri to produce this oil painting based on a famous print depicting a training session at the Hercules Club in Vienna. The original print was made over one hundred years ago. Close observers will see Joe’s likeness painted into one of the beer hoisting onlookers and, on the wall,...
When Mack Brown was named head football coach at the University of Texas in 1998, he was immediately tasked with returning Longhorn football to a place of national prominence and a culture of winning. Wisely, he sought out the insights and expertise of Darrell Royal, a man who coached the Longhorns for twenty years, won...
One of the most fascinating aspects of working in the Stark Center is the ability to work with personal letters from one physical culturist to another. This letter from George F. Jowett to Ottley R. Coulter represented a conversation between two prominent American physical culturists. In the letter, the two men discuss the foundation of...
Manufactured by Narragansett Machine Company of Providence, R.I. around the turn of the twentieth century, this pair of stationary exercise bikes are relics of the “bike boom” that swept the country in the 1890s. Each bike connects to a color-coordinated hand on the nearly 4-foot diameter dial measuring distance; the first rider to cover the...
Born in 1952 in Long Beach, California, Cathy Rigby was a popular American gymnast whose fame extended beyond the sport. The highest scoring American gymnast at the Mexico City Olympic Games of 1968, Rigby’s sporting prowess was beyond reproach. She followed her ’68 Olympic performance with United States National Championships in 1970 and 1972. Fun...
To wish you all a Happy Valentine’s Day, we thought we’d share this 1950s children’s Valentine depicting a strongman and his weightlifting pooch. The card, collected by Jan and Terry Todd, is one of several dozen twentieth-century greeting cards in their collection depicting children as weightlifters. Measuring only 2.5 x 4 inches, the card was...
