Academy of Art students bowling. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.
Academy of Art students waiting to reset pins. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.
Today’s photos show Academy of Art students having some fun bowling! Bowling was popular on Cranbrook’s campus with alleys in both Cranbrook School for Boys and Kingswood School for Girls. Kingswood School, which had the earliest alleys on campus, still uses their bowling alleys as part of the physical education curriculum.
The Academy of Art bowling lanes were located in the basement of the Art Museum and were for Academy of Art student and faculty use. These lanes did not have mechanical pinsetters and therefore had to be manually set. In 1944 the lanes were removed from the Art Museum to allow for more storage for artworks, and relocated to the lower level of the Academic Building at Cranbrook School (now called Hoey Hall) under the study hall.
–Stefanie Kae Dlugosz, Collections Fellow, Center for Collections and Research
Cranbrook Kitchen Sink 
How very interesting!
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To us boys at Cranbrook in the mid-’60s, being able to bowl instead of attending study hall was a perk for being on honor roll. We got a lot of use out of having these lanes available to us.
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