School building

“ The modern school building is the embodiment of a wholly new conception of education. The building is constructed with the utmost deference to the demands of hygiene. The placing of windows, the means of heating and ventilating, the style and arrangement of seats, have all been considered in every possible detail. When the demands of hygiene have been met, the various needs of the school are studied, and the rooms and equipment are arranged with the fullest possible regard for an enriched course of study. The exterior of the building reflects the interest of the community in æsthetics. ”

“ Trees of various kinds should be planted in appropriate places, and groups of shrubbery should help to form an attractive setting. The school grounds should have a serviceable fence and gate and there should be a playground and a school garden.
Architecture of Building.—No school building should be erected that has not first been planned or passed upon by an architect; this is now required by law in some states. A building with handsome appearance and with appropriate appointments is but a trifle, if any, more costly than one that has none. ”

“ Do you remember, when you went to school, the long closet, or dressing room, where you used to hang your coat and hat? The boys and girls of the Soldan School have steel lockers in a sunlit locker room. Do you remember the old wooden floors? These boys and girls have wooden floors to walk on, but the wood is quarter-sawed oak, and it is laid in asphalt over concrete, which makes the finest kind of floor. Do you remember the ugly old school building? The front of this one looks like Hampden Court Palace, brought up to date. Do you remember the big classroom that served almost every purpose? ”

“ The Boys' High School, a semi-ecclesiastical building, pertaining more to the Domestic Tudor style of mediæval architecture, stands up prominently on the western outskirts, overlooking the harbour. Its interior arrangements consist of a large hall with galleries, surrounded with class-rooms providing accommodation for 450 scholars.
The other school buildings, known as Government schools, of which there are five in the city and several in the suburbs, very much resemble each other in outward appearance and in internal arrangements ”

“ The school building should be in a dry, sunny, sightly spot. Ordinarily it should face the southern compass. This would move seven tenths of our rural schoolhouses, and turn more than half of them end for end. It is not at all necessary that a school building should face the road, or be very near it. Light, warmth, horizon, room to play, these are the important considerations in locating a schoolhouse. ”

“ I cannot see how it is possible to come nearer perfection in the building of a public school. There is not a dark corner in the whole structure, from the splendid gymnasium under the red-tiled roof to the indoor playground on the street floor, which, when thrown into one with the two yards that lie enclosed in the arms of the H, give the children nearly an (p. 354) acre of asphalted floor to romp on from street to street; for the building sets right through the block, with just such a front on the other street as it shows on this one. ”

“ School-houses have been like barns in the country, and like warehouses in the city, rather than fit places for children to exist and study in. The book comprises a series of twenty-three designs for school-buildings, ranging from a loghouse of one room to a brick building of two stories and basement, and containing eight rooms. ”

“ In spite of the fact that every detail of the new school building had been submitted to, and approved by, the Education Department, trouble began with an officious inspector, who on his first visit complained of the ventilation. An elementary school is never exactly a bed of roses, but we had a lofty building and classrooms, with plenty of windows, which could be adjusted to admit as much or as little fresh air as was requisite. ”

“ The school building has swelled out, so to speak, the surrounding environment remaining the same, the home, the garden and country, the relation to business life and the university. The object is to show what the school must become to get out of its isolation and secure the organic connection with social life of which we have been speaking. It is not our architect's plan for the school building that we hope to have ”

“ By the side of the models of the school-rooms, where children find school-furniture studied with painstaking care and proportioned to their stature, have been placed the works executed by the school-children themselves of every kind, primary, maternal and professional. These works, in a general way, prove an average aptitude for the industrial arts, and indicate a real taste for beautiful forms. A hall is wholly set apart for the pupils of the special schools. ”

“ Once in the school building they feel at home and take the same interest and responsibility in the work that they take in their own homes. Each child knows186 what all the other children and classes are doing, for all the children are constantly meeting in the locker rooms or as they pass through the halls for their change of classroom at the end of every hour. The auditorium and the system of visiting classes, and the repairing and manufacturing of school equipment by the students, are strong factors in creating the spirit that prevails among the scholars. ”

“ Let each township, or perhaps somewhat smaller area, select a central, well-adapted site and thereon erect a modern, well-equipped school building. But this building must not be just the traditional schoolhouse with its classrooms and rows of desks. For it is to be more than a place where the children will study and recite lessons from books; it is to be the place where all the people of the neighborhood, old and young, will [Pg 33] assemble for entertainment, amusement, and instruction. ”

“ Better Buildings and Inspection.—Similar improvements are attained in the building as a whole, in the individual rooms, and in the interior equipment. Such buildings are usually planned by competent architects and are more adequate in all their appointments. All things are subject to inspection, both by the community and the authorities. It is natural that such inspection and criticism will be satisfied only with the best; and so the surroundings of pupils become much more favorable to their mental, moral, and physical well-being than was possible in the isolated one-room school building. ”

“ It is gratifying to see the steadily growing tendency towards improvement in public school buildings and appliances. One of our graduates, who has taught two years in a poor little building used as a church, has finally succeeded in getting together the lumber for a little school-house, and, by dint of hard labor, has prevailed upon the people of the neighborhood to put up the building. ”

“ The building should be surrounded by sufficient yard room to provide ample playground. There should be plenty of shade but not so many trees that there will be an interference with the sunlight and ventilation of the grounds. Some attention should be given the beautifying of the yards, for it must be remembered that the entire child goes to school—physical, mental and spiritual natures must all be developed.
The number of stories a modern school building should have is somewhat of a mooted question ”

“ Good schools, too, are very necessary. The school-house must be built to keep the boys and girls [p23] comfortable and healthy while at work. Name some of the things needed for a good school building. ”

“ The school building is an old-fashioned two-story ramshackle affair with overhanging eaves, especially designed to obstruct light and darken the upper schoolroom. The building is in the center of a pine grove 250 × 150 feet in size, which also obstructs the light and tends to dampen the building. ”

“ Believing that the school yard should receive at least as much care as the town cemetery, women have planted trees, seeds, and bulbs. For the interior of the school building, they have at times furnished an inexpensive photographic reproduction for a school wall and a piece of statuary, or expensive rugs and pictures, or a piano, and many times they have dominated the whole scheme of inside decoration and even the architecture itself. ”

“ Art of all [Pg 33] kinds is a valuable factor in the education of children and of people generally; and a building, beautiful in construction, is no exception to the rule. Every person is educated by what impresses him. It is only within the last few years that much attention has been given to the necessity of special architecture in schoolhouses. ”

“ This would mean an acre of playground to 1,452 children, not a large amount surely, and much less than should be taken in the smaller cities. Throughout the middle states and the West, now generally a block for all new schools is given. In some cases the usefulness of the ground is being nearly destroyed by placing the school building in the center, but where the building is placed at the side or end, as it should be, this ground becomes available for many school and community uses. ”

“ Inside the building there is insufficient light and ventilation, and the old-fashioned furniture is ill adapted to the needs of the pupils. The whole structure is almost devoid of the conveniences and modern devices for making school life either comfortable or worth while. In such an environment there is none of the stimulus that the school should furnish. ”

“ After the lumber is secured, [Pg 183] the parents should be asked to "club in" with their waggons and haul it free. Then at least one good carpenter should be secured to take the lead in building. Each member of the community should agree to give a certain number of days' work in helping to put up the structure. In this work of building, the larger pupils can help a good deal, and they will have all the more interest in the school-house because they have had a hand in its erection. In these ways, by patient effort, a good frame school-house can be secured in almost any community. ”

“ Our architectural series would be by no means complete if devoted entirely to dwellings; and as the resources of an extensive professional practice in the arts which embellish and beautify our country may be largely made use of, we present here a design for another class of buildings.
A school-house is not a building which every one contemplates erecting, and yet a large proportion are, or ought to be, interested in developing in structures of this class such architectural principles as shall make their impressions in early life, and influence future tastes. ”

“ This building was designed by a student of school problems, and is not merely a theory of the architect. Each room, and each detail, articulates with every other room in harmony with a general scheme of which the child and his interests are the prime considerations. The well-being of the child takes precedence over the reputation of the architect. Every nook of the building has its specific function, and this function has vital reference to the child. The location of each piece of furniture can be explained from the viewpoint of the child, and the architectural scheme is considered subsidiary. ”

“ In the first place there should never be any waste paper on the basement floor; and in the second place boys should never carry parlor matches, or any other kind of matches, to school. There are more precious lives in a schoolhouse than in any other building in the whole world. ”

“ Dilapidated school buildings, plain and unkempt in appearance and cheap in construction, have been set in the midst of barren surroundings, unshaded by trees and unadorned with shrubs, without walks or drives to the entrance, and without even a flagpole as an evidence of patriotic enthusiasm. ”

“ Bring up and educate a boy among those who know nothing of the refinements of life, away from the progressive examples of art and taste, in a tumble-down, unplastered, ill-heated and ventilated apartment, and he never can become, with all the aid of books and teachers, as thoroughly cultivated and fitted for the duties of life, as one who has enjoyed associations of a higher order. School architecture has a meaning in it; there is value in proportion, harmony, beauty, light and shade, as applied to school buildings, that is not comprehended by all. ”

“ The interior of the building is more modern than the outside, but the arrangement of the rooms is unchanged, and one easily believes the assurance that it has undergone only such refitting as was necessary to adapt it for its present purpose, a gymnasium or high school for boys. ”

“ The immediate resolve was to build an addition of a Library and a Class-room for Modern Languages, and further to raise the School-rooms and give them better light and ventilation. Many Subscriptions were offered by the Masters, Old Pupils, and other friends of the School, towards a more ornamental style of building than the School funds could afford. ”

“ This is the youngest child among the chartered institutions of the Association, but even this child is crying out for enlarged accommodations. The enrollment of the school [318] shows a considerable increase over that of last year, and the promise for the year now opening is still larger. One building only answers all the purposes of this institution. Here are the school rooms, the teachers rooms, the President’s residence and office, dormitories, rooms for industrial training of girls, library, chapel, dining room, kitchen and laundry, and it is not a large building either. ”