Reports on the Philadelphia International Exhibition of 1876.

Date:
1877-1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reports on the Philadelphia International Exhibition of 1876. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    410/446 page 310
    (5.) School buildings; n hundred years ago. The modern school-house at Boston; and generally. Some schools defective; others complete and costly. Lack of space. rhe best industrial schools especially connected with drawing are at Cin- cinnati, St. Louis, Columbia, and Chicago; and here, as in° the primary schools, the influence of South Kensington has been felt for good. The progress made in school buildings is well shown by a contrast between a school of to-day and one of a hundred years ago. The Exhibition contained a log-hut school, furnished in every respect after the fashion of 1776, and hence contemporary with the village hedge school of England. The walls were formed of trunks of trees loosely put together; the forms were narrow, and without backs; the tables rough, and with no bar for the feet to rest upon. There was a Bible in old characters, an A B C, a primer, a pail of water, with a gourd for drinking cup, and the inevitable birch, supplemented by a stout leather strap, which was subtly divided at the end into four lashes. Such was the furnishing of a common school in the days of George Washington. Now things are very different. The Boston schools are well known. They are built very much on the Saxony model, with six rooms on a floor, each block of two rooms being separated from the next by a staircase in one direction, while in the other a corridor runs the entire length of the building. Each child has a provision of 16 feet super, or nearly twice the English allowance. Every room is built for 56 children of both sexes, and in each is a female teacher but no monitor.* The ordinary modern school-house, however, was shown in the Exhibition; a stone built structure with high pitched roof, prolonged downwards into over- shadowing eaves. At the entrance two porches give access to vestibules where boys and girls deposit their cloaks and hats. The class-rooms are spacious and lit by three windows on either side. A dado two feet high runs round the room and above it a ledge four inches wide for chalks and sponges; then a surface of cement four feet high terminating in a wooden cornice. The cement is hardened with a solution of silica and lamp-black so as to form a continuous black-board round the room. At the further end is the master's platform, and behind it are cases to contain the library and collection of objects in natural history or geology. There are no lavatories; all the children are supposed to come clean. Most of the new schools may be said to be thoroughly good, but there are many exceptions in the country districts. This Mr. Philbrick freely admits when he says our school-houses are, to a certain extent, our glory and our shame. The school committee at Lichfield in New Hampshire regrets the slight interest taken in education, and adds this is in New England, where ' the Common School system is supposed to be the one cherished institution which lies nearest every heart. Nevertheless your children are kept during the cold winter days in buildings which are less comfortable than those which, if you do not, you should provide for your cattle. A new school at Concord may serve as an example of arrangement. The two lower rooms are used, one as an intermediate, the other as a primary school. The second floor is devoted to grammar school purposes; while the assembly hall in the third story is used for general exercises. The new Ash Street School at Manchester (N.H.) has cost $65,000, with accommodation for 368 pupils, the cost per child being about 35/. It is in the shape of a Greek cross, the arms being 88 feet long and 32 feet wide, with towers 18 feet square. It contains eight class-rooms and is fitted throughout with speaking tubes and electric bells. New York in many cases sacrifices the essentials of a school, viz., air, light and the due arrangement of class-rooms in order to secure a handsome assembly hall. It is much to be regretted that in many cases sufficient ground has not been purchased at the outset, and that in consequence the children have no space for recreation, and the schools are dark and confined. Could their builders have foreseen the growth of population they might easily have guarded against this. The Chicago Board of Education built schools when land was worth nothing and hence they enclosed nothing. At Syracuse, in 1825, there was but one house in the place; now there are 50,000 people, and land is most difficult to obtain. Such examples should be a warning to the Western States. The example of the School Board for London may also be of service, the plans *E. R. Robson, School Archi ecturo.
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