What does an esteemed private school in New York’s dense confines do when it cannot accommodate all its programs in its historic building? It takes its show on the road.

In 1892, Clara Spence, a pioneering educator who believed in higher education for women, opened Miss Spence’s School for girls to prepare her pupils for college. For almost 100 years, the Spence School has occupied a Neo-Georgian edifice designed by John Russell Pope in Manhattan’s illustrious Carnegie Hill neighborhood, a stone’s throw from Central Park. Despite a recent major renovation and expansion of the building, which today houses the middle and upper schools (younger students are in a different building), Spence needed a regulation gym for the competitive play of basketball, volleyball, squash, and badminton. Other nearby private schools had found separate locations for athletic programs, and Spence, too, looked for space beyond its immediate neighborhood.