As has been said many times before, the school began in 1881 with only the State appropriation of $2,000 per annum, specifically for the payment of teachers’ salaries and for no other purpose. The method by which we have succeeded in securing the 2,267 acres of land which the school now owns has heretofore been described. These 2,267 acres of land are mainly comprised in two tracts. The tract that forms the site of the Institute is composed of 835 acres, and is known as the “home farm.” The other large tract, which is about four miles southeast of the Institute, composed of 800 acres, is known as “Marshall farm.”
Upon the home farm is located the 42 buildings, counting large and small, which make up the Tuskegee Institute. Of these 42 buildings, Alabama, Davidson, Huntington, Cassidy and Science, Halls, the Agricultural Trades and Laundry Buildings, and the Chapel are built of brick. There are also two large frame halls—Porter Hall, which was the first building built of the Tuskegee group, and Phelps Hall, a commodious and well appointed structure dedicated to the Bible Training department. The other buildings are smaller frame buildings and various cottages used for commissary, store rooms, recitation rooms, dormitories and teachers’ residences. There are also the Shop and Saw Mill, with Engine Rooms and Dynamo in conjunction. The brickyard, where all the bricks that have been used in building our brick buildings were made, is also situated near the school. Last year alone the brickyard made 1,500,000 bricks. It is equipped with excellent and improved machinery for brickmaking, and is under the immediate supervision of Mr. William Gregory, a graduate of Tuskegee. The total valuation of the property, including the yards and all buildings, the home and the Marshall farms is placed at $300,000. This does not include the endowment fund.
The Agricultural Department of the school has at its head Prof. G. W. Carver, a graduate of the Iowa State University, and a man of experience as a scientific farmer and a scientist of no mean acquirements. He has 8 assistants who help in looking after the divisions of dairying, stockraising, horticulture and truck farming embraced in this department. The State of Alabama appropriates annually the sum of $1,500 for the maintenance of an agricultural experiment station in connection with our agricultural department. Some of the experiments of Prof. Carver have attracted much attention, and it is recognized that his conduct of the station is doing much to show what improvements upon the old methods of farming may be wrought by scientific agriculture. This department is well housed in a beautiful brick building, containing a well equipped chemical laboratory, erected at a cost of $10,000, adapted to the purposes of agricultural experiment, and other apparatus necessary for the dairy and other divisions.
It is through the direction of the Agricultural department that the vast amount of farm and garden products, used by the 1,200 people constituting the population of the school when in session, is grown. About 135 acres of the home farm are devoted to the raising of vegetables, strawberries, grapes, and other fruits. The Marshall farm, with 350 acres in cultivation, is utilized for the growing of corn, sugar cane (from which syrup is made), potatoes, grain, hay and other farm products.
Mr. J. N. Calloway is the manager of the Marshall farm. It is worked by student labor, keeping from thirty to forty-five boys on it constantly. There is also a night school upon this farm, for the accommodation of students who work there, which is a branch of the main night school at the Institute. At present the farm night school requires the services of two teachers.
The Marshall farm not only produces a large amount of the farm products that are used by the school and its 800 head of live stock, counting horses, mules, cows, oxen, sheep and hogs, but also furnishes opportunity for students to learn the art and science of farming, at the same time attending night school and making something above expenses to be used when the student enters day school.
A large portion of the Marshall farm, about 400 acres, is utilized as pasture for the dry cows and beef cattle. Everything grown upon the farm is sold to the school at market prices. The expenses of running the farm are also accurately kept. At the end of the year a balance is struck. Last year the Marshall farm come out over $500 ahead, including in the expense account the salary of the manager.
The mechanical department of the institution is now housed in the well equipped trades building, recently completed at a cost of $36,000. It is known as the Slater-Armstrong Memorial Trades Building. It was dedicated and formally opened on Wednesday, January 10, 1900, and is the largest building on the Tuskegee Institute grounds, and stands between the Agricultural Building and the new chapel. The shape is that of a double Greek cross, having an open court 85x112 feet in the center. When completed, it will measure 283x300 feet, the main or central portion being two stories high, the wings one story. This measurement does not include a room for the sawmill, which is to come at the extreme rear end. Owing to the fact that sufficient money has not yet been obtained, the rear portion of the building, consisting of seven rooms, has not been completed. It is built entirely of brick, and contains twenty-seven rooms. In round numbers, it took ten hundred thousand bricks to construct the building thus far, and every one of these bricks was made by students under the instructor in brickmaking, and laid in the wall by students under the instructor of bricklaying. The plans and specifications of the building were drawn by Mr. R. R. Taylor, formerly in charge of the architectural and mechanical drawing department of the Institute. The general oversight of both the planning and construction was, of course, exercised by Mr. J. H. Washington, Director of Industries.
The interior arrangements of the building are splendidly suited to the teaching of the trades. The rooms, while varying in size from 37x42, the smallest, to 37x85, the largest, will average 37x55, the ceiling being 13 feet high. On the first floor there are the Director’s office, reading room, exhibit room, wheelwright shop, blacksmith shop, tin shop, printing office, carpenter shop, repair shop, woodworking machine room, ironworking machine room, foundry, brickmaking and plastering rooms, general stock and supply room, and a boiler and engine room. The second floor contains the mechanical drawing room, harness shop, paint shop, tailor shop, shoe shop, and electrical laboratory, and a room for carriage trimming and upholstering. Each shop has a cloak and tool room connected with it. Better lighted rooms could scarcely be found in any building. Each shop receives light from two sides and end. The office, reading room, and exhibit room are finished with wainscoting to window sills, and plastered from there up and overhead. In the drawing rooms the walls are plastered, but overhead the ceiling of this room is of yellow pine, panelled so as to show design. This ceiling is painted white. The other rooms are not plastered or sealed, but have what is called a yellow ochre finish on the walls. The machinery in the building is run by a 125-horse power engine and 75-horse power boiler, both donated by Mr. C. P. Huntington, of New York.
Each division is well supplied with all of the tools, appliances and machinery necessary to its successful working and to the accurate teaching of the trades. The director of this large and important department is Mr. J. H. Washington, who has under him twenty-two instructors for the various divisions.