BUILT ENVIRONMENT 1940 BOT Buildings and Grounds Committee Report

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 10: BUILT ENVIRONMENT
1940 Buildings and Grounds Report

BUILT ENVIRONMENT 1940 BOT Buildings and Grounds Committee Report

Draper Industrial building under construction. [cobb_alice_083]

West Wind for older girls, 1941. Photo by Arthur Dodd (with filter). [nace_1_004a.jpg]

TAGS: Mary Rockwell Hook, official PMSS architect, Building and Grounds Committee, buildings and grounds, built environment reports, architectural design, building construction, building repair, building insurance, landscape architecture, gardens, farming, carpentry, industrial skills, Practice House, Country Cottage, Laurel House,

In 1940 the Board of Trustees initiated an informal report to be prepared by the School’s architect, Mary Rockwell Hook. On April 15, 1940, the “informal report” was presented to the Trustees. The report evaluated the physical features of the School and echoed the earliest landscape and site plans developed by Katherine Pettit and Mary Rockwell Hook. In 1940 a committee was formed to study the School’s physical features and their development over time. This committee was called the “Building and Grounds Committee.” The report detailing the formation of the formal committee and its finding follows.

TRANSCRIPTION: BUILT ENVIRONMENT 1940 BOT Buildings and Grounds Committee Report

1940 BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS COMMITTEE REPORT

Pine Mountain
April 15, 1940

Just a year ago in April 1939, Mrs. Hook sent an informal report to the Board on the physical features of the school. In this report, she made a request that a special committee be appointed to study the physical development of the school. Accordingly, at the next meeting in New York last December, such a committee was appointed, consisting of Mrs. [Mary Rockwell] Hook, chairman, Mrs. [Mrs. Leonard Elsmith (Dorothy Olcott Elsmith)], Miss [Evelyn K.] Wells, Mr. [W.W. ] Ball, and Mrs. [Gladys] Morris [wife of Director, Glyn Morris], ex officio.

This committee was called a Buildings and Grounds committee. It was empowered to make a survey of the school plant, offer recommendations not only for improvement and repairs of the present buildings and grounds but to consider future needs as well and to formulate a tentative schedule of a building program over a range of possibly another ten or fifteen years. Before this committee had had any opportunity to function, the Laurel House fire in January catapulted us into an acute situation necessitating an immediate building program on a large scale.

The Board at its emergency session in Lexington in February discussed this program and agreed that in addition to the repairs and improvements of the present buildings, two buildings should be erected to replace Laurel House. One to be the central dining room and recreation center with quarters for several workers and a separate girls’ house to accommodate about twenty-five girls and three workers.

Mrs. Hook, both as school architect and chairman of the Buildings and Grounds committee drove back to the school with Mr. and Mrs. Morris, Mrs. Elsmith accompanied her and they spent five wintry days at the school. During that time in consultation with Mr. and Mrs. Morris and other workers they considered the following matters:

Necessary repairs and improvements to existing buildings
Improvements to roads and walks
Building of a new faculty house for the new doctor and his wife
Sites and preliminary sketches for the two new buildings
Progression of future buildings

See the detailed reports n the attached pages.

At this point, some confusion arose in the minds of some of the members of the Buildings and Grounds Committee as to whether they had, by the fact of the fire, automatically become the building committee for the new Laurel [House II] and new girls House {West Wind]. There was a question of whether their appointment to the original committee carried responsibility for such a major project. In the absorbing business of the Lexington meeting, this was not made clear. Therefore in April when Mrs. Hook, Mrs. Gratz and Mrs. Elsmith were within range of each other in Florida, they met informally at a middle point in Fort Myers. During their conference, this was discussed and an attempt was made to clarify these positions and duties.

They came to the conclusion that it would simplify matters, save Mrs. Hook a tremendous amount of correspondence, and make action more direct if we continued to act and operate as we have in the past in new building enterprises. Namely to recognize and count Mrs. Hook as the official school architect, responsible to the Board, free to call in any members of the Board or anyone from outside that she desired in consultation. This would free her from an unwieldy, scattered, committee to which she would feel obliged to report frequently, would conserve her time, and make for more progress on the building. Thus she serves the Board in a double capacity.

A. Recommendations on repairs and Improvements.

Big Log — to be remodeled into a guest house in 1941 if available.
1. 1. To put in a shower and two toilets
  2. Place the necessary septic tanks — keeping in mind in adding these facilities the future use of this building as a guest house.
  3. Some necessary rewiring, recommended by the insurance inspectors.
  4. To begin to collect and set aside good logs for the added wing for a guest house.

2. Boys House — This needs some redemption.

To remodel living arrangements by eliminating the crowded sleeping porches and partitioning so as to provide inside sleeping accommodations, some for four in a room (the younger boys) some for two in a room (older boys). It was suggested that the younger boys may be spaced downstairs, the older upstairs.
To add an upstairs bath with shower. At present all the boys (30) use one downstairs bath.
To do some painting on the inside. Other small additions to make for more convenience; recommends to lighten up the rooms, maybe paint the ceiling in the living room.
To do some simple redecorating (curtains, pillows, chairs, to make the living room more attractive ad to induce the boys to take more pride ad care in their own hours.
Some necessary wiring. All open wiring at present. No Box.

3. Infirmary — Becoming a real community rural hospital, in addition to uses for school workers and students.

A new furnace — Imperative (in)
New linoleum in bathroom, hall, and doctors clinic room
Enlargement of nurses sitting room by taking in a narrow part of porch.
Other small additions to make for more convenience, recommended by nurse.

4. Practice House — For married faculty couple.

a. Put in a bathroom (Sears Roebuck)
Change the stairs. Very steep and inconvenient.
Freshen up a little after its use this winter for eight boys

5. Zande House

Repairing and refinishing floors
Remodeling and repainting bath room
Raising room between two back dormers to give more air and light and space to upper rooms.

6. Garage for Mr. Morris where road now turns in back of Zande House

These last two items (5 and 6) at the insistence of Mrs. Hook and Mrs. Elsmith.

Note: The work on all these repairs is l to be done by staff and student labor this summer. Mr. Areson can do the wiring, Mr. [Boone] Callahan the plumbing ad carpentry with the boys’ help. Laurel House and the Girls House to be under separate supervision.

B. Improvements on roads, parking facilities, and grounds.

Beyond the recommendation that roads should be widened whenever possible for at present they are a hazard to both drivers and pedestrians, it is impractical to suggest more until the sites and plans for the new buildings are completed.
There should be some turnaround at Far House. More space near School House. Plenty of parking near new Laurel House.
Possibility of making entrance gate more attractive. To be done after al the trucking and hauling for new buildings.
Demolition of little coal house for Far House.
Removal of row of garages below Chapel. Can be used during building for lumber storage.
More thought on the beautifying of the grounds after all this heavy building is completed. The hope is that some new member f the staff may be an ex-landscape architect or horticulturist.

C. New Doctor’s House [Jubilee]

Is well under way, with student labor and one outside carpenter. New Doctor has arrived. House is well and attractively located up on slope above the infirmary, across the road from it, between Practice House and the poultry sheds which are being demolished. It has a stone basement for furnace ad garage, built from stones left from Laurel House — old bricks usable for the chimney. this was much desired by Mr. Morris to relieve the problem of workers accommodations which has been acute for the past two or three years, to help in the preset congestion caused by the fire, to offer an added inducement for the doctor’s permanence, to free him for his fullest usefulness.

D. Sites and sketches for two new buildings Mrs. Hook as architect, will report on these.

E. Future Building

It seems agreed by the Board and Mr. Morris that a hundred boarding pupils is about the ideal number for Pine Mountain and that there is at present no intention of expanding beyond that, feeling that this is about the right number to conserve the quality and training traditional at Pine Mountain.

It is also agreed that about twenty-five is the maximum number of boys and girls to live in one house, that a certain individual approach, and a home atmosphere is apt to be sacrificed if the number exceeds that. It is therefore the plan to have eventually the two girls’ house, each accommodating twenty-five located up on the ridge near Pole House and near the site of the present Far House. The second boy’s house to be placed in Saw Mill Hollow thus concentrating the boys at the lower end of the school grounds the girls at the upper with Laurel House, School House and Chapel between.

It is constantly kept in mind that any new buildings must be kept simple but practical, must be in keeping with the purpose of the school and must be appropriate to the mountain setting, yet expressive of that distinct and artistic quality we all feel here.

It is hoped that the second girls house can be built in 1941 thus releasing Big Log for the much-needed guest House.

If the Infirmary grows in its services as it has in the past year, it will have to be expanded and replaced. It is to be hoped that some funds from some foundation or group interested in rural health problems might be approached for this.

FINANCES

Although the Board made no commitment in writing it seemed the sense of the February meeting that from the fund so providentially coming to us at this critical tie, funds free to use for building purposes as expressed by the legatees, some $65,000, including $18,000 insurance on Laurel House, might be so delegated if necessary. This would leave approximately a hundred thousand dollars to be added to the endowment fund for the recent legacies.

It was, we believe, the further sense of this meeting that $5,000 of this might be allotted to necessary repairs and improvements. Those that have been itemized above, including the Doctors’ House [Jubilee] for which the Executive Committee authorized up [to] $1,000 (including $625 known as the Silver Jubilee Fund.) would it is estimated come within this amount.

It is hoped and estimated that Laurel House can be built exclusive of equipment for $35,000 and the girls house for $15,000. This leaves a leeway of $10,000.

Funds that are coming in designated for Laurel House are being set aside for a special furnishing Fund. It is further hoped that friends of the school will want to give individual items.