BUILDINGS AT TOUGALOO, MISS.
By Rev. A. Hatch.
The aim of the educational work here is, in a word, to fit our students for practical life and to instruct in the art of teaching. A course of six years, after that of our primary grade, completes the regular normal course. In addition to a long and thorough drill in the more common and elementary branches, this course requires three terms each of United States history, Latin and algebra, two each of philosophy and geometry, one of physiology, natural history and science of government and four terms of Bible study.
A small one-story house neatly finished off with Southern pine from ceiled roof to wainscoting is reserved for the primary school where, in limited numbers, children from the plantations around are permitted to attend. The chief object here is to furnish a model school for our normal classes and a place where they can both learn by observation and practice for themselves under an experienced teacher who comes from the North expressly to have charge of this room. Besides this teacher our corps of instructors is seven strong, including one who is almost exclusively music teacher.
Something of external enlargement has fallen to the lot of Tougaloo within a year past. The beginning of the last winter term brought a crowd of students who, with difficulty, could find a lodging place among us, owing to the lack of buildings. The young men, many of them, had to make the best of the rudest sort of apartments. It was when every available room apparently was full, and shortly after a number of students had been sent away, that the “chapel,” with its second floor devoted to rooms for twenty-eight young men, took fire and burned to the ground. This building, never even in its best days a very commodious, convenient, or cheery place, was the best we had, excepting, perhaps, the “mansion.” On the first floor were a low-walled chapel-room, serving the purposes of school-room, assembly-room and church, and two small recitation-rooms. In one of these was kept the small library of the institution. This library embraced sets of the New American Cyclopædia and the Family Library, some 300 or more Sunday-school books, a few miscellaneous volumes—the gifts of individuals—and a considerable collection of Congressional books, reports, etc., sent to the Normal Department from Washington. The greater part of this incipient library was saved. The sets above mentioned, however, which our students were beginning to appreciate and use intelligently, were broken up.
STRIEBY HALL, TOUGALOO, MISS.
There was an insurance on the chapel of $3,000. Something had been previously accumulating through special solicitations and the benevolence of friends, for enlarging the hall for young women. That addition was in progress at the time of the fire. This building contained the boarding and laundry departments of the school. It had rooms for thirty-two young women. It was proposed to enlarge it by adding another story to the long two-story structure already on the ground, and also a three-story wing, furnishing in all accommodations for seventy-two girls, besides containing two good-sized sitting-rooms, a pleasant sewing-room, and private apartments for the matron and five teachers. This has been completed.
Early last spring, funds were forthcoming for a new hall for young men. Work was immediately begun. A fair crop of “Mississippi brick” was raised on the spot. A sufficient number of men were employed to push on rapidly the work of building. A commodious and pleasing hall 41 × 112 feet stands ready for students.
A deep, roomy basement extends under the whole building, furnishing rooms not only for uses connected with the hall, but also those connected with certain of the industrial departments. The first floor affords us a large room for chapel, two convenient recitation-rooms, an office, and apartments for a small family.
The second and third floors are used as dormitories. The rooms, 34 in number, are of good size, light and airy, neatly and substantially, though simply, furnished. While in the construction of Strieby Hall strict economy has been studied, modern ideas of convenience have been introduced. Water is brought to each floor from large tanks underneath the roof. A large bath-room is on the second floor.
The large “mansion,” which has served a great variety of purposes, has now been turned for the most part into school uses. It has two large recitation-rooms, a library, a reading-room, two music-rooms, besides an office and suitable rooms for one family and guests.
These four buildings, together with the neat little cottage for the president and his family, comprise the chief externals of Tougaloo University. The old building for young men, known as the “Barracks,” is to take its proper and more humble place among the barns and outhouses connected with the farm.