Olympia Gym, Ridgewood, New York (Queens)

In the heart of Queens, NY, there was a gym that stood the test of time for nearly sixty years. That gym was named the Olympia Health Club. Throughout the gym’s long history, many legends to the iron game trained there: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Franco Colombo, and Dennis Tinerino –just to name a few.  To fully understand the legacy of the Olympia Health Club, one must first look into how the gym came into existence.

The Olympia Health Club was opened by legendary bodybuilding contest promoters Al Fives and Andy Bostino in 1958, at a time when bodybuilding gyms were not common. Andy and Al first set up shop in a large storefront on Fresh Pond Road in the Ridgewood section of Queens.  At the time of the gym’s opening, coeducational gyms were nonexistent. Realizing this inadequacy, Andy and Al set up a separate gym for women on the upper floor of the club. Since weight training at the time was thought to be an activity for men only, this inclusion of women was a groundbreaking decision and one of the club’s many admirable attributes.

Denis Tinerino (Top) and a local lifter doing grip training.

Due to the great size of the facility and Fives and Bostino’s involvement in promoting bodybuilding contests, The Olympia Health Club quickly drew weightlifters and bodybuilders from all over the five boroughs of New York City. Fives and Bostino became well known in the fledgling New York bodybuilding scene, and many professionals sought them out for all matters pertaining to training and nutrition.

Magazine article featuring one of the many contests promoted by Al Fives and Andy Bostino.

(L-R: Andy Bostino, Some Austrian bodybuilder and Al Fives)

As the Olympia Health Club grew in both reputation and prominence, bodybuilders from all over the world made it a point to stop in for a training session whenever they were in town. One of the bodybuilders IFBB president Joe Weider brought over from Austria was named Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger and his best friend (and fellow IFBB competitor) Franco Columbo made great use of the vast amount of equipment that the Olympia Health Club had to offer. One of these great pieces of equipment was a Jubinville preacher curl machine that was used prominently in the gym all the way up until 2012.  That very same Jubinville preacher curl machine was even immortalized by legendary photographer Brian Moss in an early 2000’s Animalpak advertisement during one of his many photo sessions at the Olympia Health Club.

As time progressed, Al Fives and Andy Bostino continued promoting bodybuilding contests, but found increasing disagreement with the use of performance enhancing drugs by athletes in the bodybuilding universe. So in 1979, Bostino and Fives formed The National Gym Association (NGA).  The focus of the NGA was to promote drug free bodybuilding as well as educate gym owners, bodybuilders, and personal trainers on all matters of physical fitness. In the 1980s, Andy Bostino moved away from the day-to-day operations of the Olympia Health Club in order to devote more time to the NGA while Al Fives continued to operate the gym. Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, the Olympia Health Club remained a staple in the Ridgewood community.

Iconic photo by Brian Moss featuring Frank McGrath using the same preacher curl machine that Arnold & Franco used in the above photos, over 30 years later.

In 2001, its longtime manager, Gerard Quiros, purchased The Olympia Health Club. The gym continued to operate under Quiros’ ownership and maintained its well-gained reputation as a serious, no nonsense facility. Quiros continued to run the gym as a more serious facility at a time when other fitness centers started to become more mainstream by catering less to bodybuilders and powerlifters and more towards everyday people. Under Gerard Quiros’ ownership, the Olympia Health Club underwent a massive renovation that included upgraded equipment and amenities.  As the first decade of the new millennium came to end, The Olympia Health Club was about to experience yet another change in ownership.

Gerard Quiros and members of Olympia Gym.

In 2011, The Olympia Health Club was purchased by the United Presbyterian Church, which continued to run the gym as an outreach program. It was the Church’s hope that the gym would help increase congregation numbers. The head of the church, Reverend Henry Fury wanted the gym to remain a comfortable place for the community, a place where a member could come and talk about a problem or receive guidance. CBS news even ran a feature on the church’s ownership of the gym in 2014. At the time of the feature, the church admitted that the gym was barely breaking even and the money from the gym was used to fund the Church’s other outreach programs. Still, the church attempted to keep the Olympia Health Club an affordable and welcoming place for the community.

Recent photo of Olympia Gym, shortly before closing.

Sadly, the Olympia Health Club shut its doors permanently in November of 2015. And, with the closing of the Olympia Health Club, another historic neighborhood gym has gone quietly into the night.

Storefront shot of Olympia Gym.