Part 11 (2/2)
”4. Darkroom, 4 x 8 feet, for children's experiments in photography.
”5. Laundry room, 5 x 21 feet, with tubs, drain, and drying apparatus.
”6. Gymnasium or play room, 13 x 23 feet.
”7. Tank room containing a 400-gallon pneumatic pressure tank, storage battery for electricity, hand pump for emergencies, water gauge, sewer pipes, floor drain, etc.
”8. Engine room, containing gasoline engine, water pump, electrical generator, switchboard, water tank for cooling gasoline engine, weight for gas pressure, gas mixer, batteries, pipes, wires, etc.
”The pumps lift water from a well into pressure tank through pipes below the frost line. Gasoline is admitted through pipes below the frost line from two 50-gallon tanks underground, 30 feet from building. All rooms are wired for electricity and plumbed for gas. The bas.e.m.e.nt is thoroughly ventilated.
”The main floor contains a school room 22 x 27 feet in the clear, lighted wholly from the north side. A ground gla.s.s in the rear admits sunlight for sanitation. Schoolroom has adjustable seats and desks, telephone, and teachers' desk. Stereopticon is hung in wall at rear.
Alcove or closet on east side for books, teachers' wraps, etc.
Schoolroom has a small organ, ample book cases, shelves, and apparatus.
Pure air enters from above children's heads and pa.s.ses out at floor into ventilating stack through fireplace.
”Main floor has two toilet rooms, each of these having lavatories, wash bowl with hot and cold water, pressure tank for hot water and for heat, shower bath with hot and cold water, ventilating apparatus, looking gla.s.s, towel rack, soap box, etc. Each toilet room is reached by a circuitous pa.s.sageway furnis.h.i.+ng room for children's wraps, overshoes, etc. The scheme secures absolute privacy in toilet rooms. All toilet room walls contain air chambers to deaden sound. The toilet rooms are clean, decent, and beautiful. They are never disfigured with vile language or other defacement.
”All rural schoolhouses with the comb of the roof running one way have attics, but the attic of this rural school is the first one and the only one that has been well utilized. This attic is 15 x 35 feet, inside measurement, all in one room; distance from floor to ceiling 7 feet in the middle part. It is abundantly lighted through gable lights and roof lights. It contains modern manual-training benches for use of eight or ten children at one time, a gas range and other apparatus for experimental cooking. It is furnished with both gas and electric light.
It has a wash bowl with hot and cold water, looking gla.s.s, towels, etc.
It has a large typical kitchen sink and a drinking fountain, but no drinking cup, either common or uncommon. It has cupboards, boxes, and receptacles for various experiments in home economics. It has a disinfecting apparatus, a portable agricultural-chemistry laboratory and numerous other equipments.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XIII.
FIG. 15.--A rear view of the model rural school building at the Kirkville Normal.]
”A rural school can be built here from beginning to completion with all the above-mentioned equipments of every kind, including furniture, for $2250. The heating and ventilating apparatus, the pressure tanks, gasoline engine, water pumps, dynamo, furnace, etc., can all be easily adapted to a two-room model, a three-room school, or a six-room school by having each fixture slightly larger.
”This model therefore solves the schoolbuilding question for villages, towns, and consolidated rural schools.”
THE CORNELL SCHOOLHOUSE
An attractive rural schoolhouse was erected some years ago at the New York State College of Agriculture, to serve as a suggestion architecturally and otherwise to rural districts. It is a one-teacher building, and yet allows for the introduction of the new methods of teaching. It is a wooden building, with cement stucco interior, heated with hot-air furnace, and with two water toilets attached. The total cost was about $2000. The College writes as follows of the house:--
”The prevailing rural schoolhouse is a building in which pupils sit to study books. It ought to be a room in which pupils do personal work with both hands and mind. The essential feature of this new schoolhouse, therefore, is a workroom. This room occupies one-third of the floor s.p.a.ce. Perhaps it would be better if it occupied two-thirds of the floor s.p.a.ce. If the building is large enough, however, the two kinds of work could change places in this schoolhouse.
”The building is designed for twenty-five pupils in the main room. The folding doors and windows in the part.i.tion enable one teacher to manage both rooms.
”It has been the purpose to make the main part of the building about the size of the average rural schoolhouse, and then to add the workroom as a wing or projection. Such a room could be added to existing school buildings; or, in districts in which the building is now too large, one part of the room could be part.i.tioned off as a workroom.
”It is the purpose, also, to make this building artistic, attractive, and homelike to children, sanitary, comfortable, and durable. The cement-plaster exterior is handsomer and warmer than wood, and on expanded metal lath it is durable. The interior of this building is very attractive. Nearly any rural schoolhouse can secure a water-supply and instal toilets as part of the school building.
”The openings between schoolroom and workroom are fitted with glazed swing sash and folding doors, so that the rooms may be used either singly or together, as desired.
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