Who are the Sacramento Turners? Peek inside club’s building on 100th anniversary
Maybe once a month someone wanders into the Sacramento Turn Verein, curious about the place, according to member Uli Pelz.
Some have passed by the organization’s red-brick building at 3349 J St., which looks a little like Memorial Auditorium but smaller. Both buildings were constructed around the same time in the mid-1920s.
Or maybe people have gone to an event at the building, which is rented to community groups. There’s a library, handball courts, banquet space and more inside.
The curious had an opportunity on April 25 to peek inside Turner Hall during an open house that marked 100 years in its current location.
Pelz, 82, was born in Germany, grew up in Austria and has been a member of Sacramento Turn Verein for 40 years. His wife, Susie, is president of the library.
The organization, which began as a gymnastics club in Germany, dates to 1854 in Sacramento and was once one a significant social force, hosting well-attended parties and political conventions. While those days are long over, Pelz isn’t the only person with a soft spot for the organization.
What Sacramento Turn Verein once was
Sacramento Turn Verein already had history by the time of its 90th anniversary in 1944. The group had been founded locally in 1854 by “27 members out of the ranks of prominent Sacramento citizens,” according to coverage by The Bee of the anniversary. A cornerstone for its longtime home at 912 K St., Old Turner Hall, was laid in 1859.
“Many early residents of Sacramento will recall social affairs held by the Sacramento Turn Verein at Old Turner Hall located on K Street between Ninth and Tenth,” The Bee noted then.
The parties the club hosted at the old venue — such as Sacramento Turn Verein’s ninth annual masquerade ball, held March 1-2, 1878 — were astonishing.
“Mirth ran riot from 9 o’clock in the evening until 6 o’clock this morning; the costumes, groupings, features and general arrangements were novel, fun-provoking and in many cases decidedly original,” The Bee wrote.
Members in these years included Captain Frank Ruhstaller, a well-known local brewer.
Parties weren’t the only thing that happened at Old Turner Hall, though. There were fraternal organization meetings and “history-making political conventions,” as The Bee noted in 1924, with the old hall short walk from the state Capitol. Sports like fencing, boxing and gymnastics could also be practiced within the hall.
“Turner Hall for many years was the only large hall in Sacramento available for public events and therefore it became the playground for practically the entire community,” one Sacramento Turn Verein member, F. P. Gehring, told The Bee in 1924.
By its final years, the hall mostly hosted dancing, admitting men for 50 cents and women free of charge.
The old hall was razed in 1921 to create the I. F. Morris Building, which would serve as a K Street entrance for the Senator Theatre that opened in 1924.
German heritage
Over 5 million people came to America from what is now Germany in the 1800s, representing around 10% of the U.S. population back then. For some time, it wasn’t hard to find nods to German heritage stateside. Turner membership peaked at around 42,000 people in the U.S. in 1893, according to Sacramento Turn Verein’s website.
The Great Depression likely had a negative impact on Turn Verein membership. So did America’s fights against Germany in World War I and World War II, even if it was clear whose side the Turners were on, as The Bee noted in 1944.
“Members of the Turn Verein fought in the Civil War,” The Bee wrote. “A present member is Jacob Mahr, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, many fought in World War I and 25 members are in the armed forces in the present conflict.”
Sacramento Turn Verein today
Those who enter Turner Hall these days fall into two camps.
The first are people who aren’t Turn Verein members but attend the space for events. This group includes Sacramento City Councilman Phil Pluckebaum, whose district includes Sacramento Turn Verein’s current location. “It’s an event space that has history,” Pluckebaum said. “You can kind of hear the echoes of generations past that have gathered there.”
William Burg, president of Preservation Sacramento said his organization has used the current hall. “If we hold an event, we like to have it in a place that’s got some histories and some stories to tell,” Burg said.
The second camp is current members, such as John Middleton, who joined Sacramento Turn Verein in 1991. He said that membership has largely been the same group over the past 20 years. But he also noted that some people come to the building for its two major annual events: Bockbierfest in April and Oktoberfest.
“There’s a lot of people that come to it and keep coming to it over the years,” Middleton said. “Those two fairly unique events make this a hidden gem.”
Ross Lovato said, as he sat near a handball court at the Sacramento Turn Verein building, that he’d been a member of the organization for more than two decades. “We have a great group of guys that hang out here, good competitive matches,” Lovato said.
Charles Ritchie estimated that there are up to 250 members of the main club and 100 to 200 more people involved in sections like German language schools or acting or dancing groups that don’t require full membership.
Ritchie commutes from Folsom to be involved with Sacramento Turn Verein. He had an idea of what in 2026 was the group’s glue.
“I think it’s the sense of community that people get when they join,” Ritchie said. “For a lot of people, it’s like a family — family and friends that you’ve grown up with, over a lot of years.”
