Representative Fred Purnell blew off some steam with the punching bag at the new House gym in 1920. The gym also had rowing machines, horizontal bars, dumbbells, medicine balls, weight pulleys, a steam room, and an indoor golf course, for male Representatives to keep fit. One hundred and forty Congressmen chipped in $10 each to buy equipment. Female Members finally joined the gym in 1963, when a fitness room for women was designed in the new Rayburn House Office Building.
