[Editor's note: These pictures, and the following written account, are from Harper's Weekly for June 7, 1890, and reflect the plans for the Drexel Institute about 18 months before it opened. -- Roger Ashton McCain]
INDUSTRIAL training is the order of the day. It is the latest "fad" in
education, if one may be allowed to use that word in connection with such a subject.
The old course of study in the public schools is not satisfactory. It provides no
training for the hand and the eye. It is not "practical" enough to suit
the average citizen, who by "practical" means money- producing. Industrial
training, it is thought, will prepare boys and girls to make a living when they come
out of school.
It is a noteworthy fact that this subject of industrial training has been taken up by well- educated people, who do not regard schooling as valuable simply for the knowledge it imparts that is immediately applicable to money-making. Superintendent MacAllister in Philadelphia, the Public Education Society in New York, Principal Woodward in St. Louis, and even the Board of Education in New York, have recognized, in pro- viding for a certain amount of industrial training in school, that it should be merely one feature of the course, and should be so taught as rather to be a means of general training than an acquirement of purely technical skill.
The scheme of instruction to be pursued in the Drexel Industrial Institute, although the details of it have not yet been elaborated, will be general, and not purely technical. The purpose of the " regular " course will be to give to young persons who have received a grammar-school. education such technical instruction as will enable them to learn trades easily, at the same time affording them instruction in mathematics, book-keeping, physics, chemistry, and English. There will be special classes also for older pupils, which will be purely technical, but to enter which the pupils must have a good foundation in the ordinary English branches.
The building for the Institute is at the northeast corner of Thirty-second and Chestnut streets, and occupies three sides of a square. It is near the Powelton Avenue station of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and not far from the Twenty-fourth Street station of the Baltimore and Ohio, and there are several lines of street cars within easy walking distance. The building is to be about 200 feet square and three stories in height frontIng on Chestnut Street.. The outside will be mainly of a light buff brick, with terra-cotta ornamentation.
The special feature. of the interior is a large central hall, nearly 100 feet square, and reach- a glass roof oil the ceiling line of the third floor. From the northern rear end of this hall a grand marble stairway leads to the upper floors. Broad galleries runaround the inside court on tile second and third floors, giving entrance to the various rooms all of which are lighted from the outside.
On the first floor are the museum 56 by 40 feet; the library, 56 by 70 feet; and reading- room, 56 by 40; a small lecture hall, 40 by 56; and, distinct from other parts of thebuilding, the great lecture hall, 56 by 154 feet, which will seat about 2000 people. The floor of this hall slopes downward from the entrance on Thirty-second Street to the rear or eastern end, where the stage is placed, thus allowing sufficient height to the ceiling, without carrying that above the level of the second floor.
There are twenty-four class-rooms in the building, amply provided with cloak-rooms, wash-rooms, etc., and as each of these will contain, on the average. at least 100 pupils, there will be room for 2400 in the building at once.
In the middle of the front on the top floor is the gymnasium, a room about 60 feet square, which will, of course, be fitted up with all necessary appliances. Special attention has been paid to beating, lighting, and ventilation. Steam heat and electric lights will be used throughout. There will be 1700 incandescent lamps The interior wood-work will be of oak.
The building, for tile construction of which contracts have recently been signed, is expected to be ready for occupation in September, 1891. Its cost is estimated at about $500,000. The donor, Mr. Anthony J. Drexel, of the well-known banking house, expects to provide, also, an endowment fund of $1,000,000 to keep the Institute in permanent operation.
