All the Rough Carpentry Was Assigned to Boys of the Woodworking Section of the Vocational School
[Plate I]
How the Work Was Distributed.—It will be recalled that boys and girls were to be coworkers in the designing, planning, and building of the house. The boys were to be held responsible for the drawings, the decorating after designs made by the girls, and the higher grades of woodwork, including the finishing of the rooms and the making of the furniture. They were to do the wiring for the electric lights, the bells, and the interior telephones; and they were to install all the fixtures in connection with this wiring. Boys from the metal-working sections were to do the necessary piping for gas and water and some of the work of plumbing; but, since the laws regulating plumbing are strict and well enforced, as they should be, it was necessary to keep this most essential feature of the work under charge of licensed plumbers. But this requirement did not remove even the plumbing of the building from the field of public school work; for, fortunately, this city has a well-equipped plumbing school in the trades school department, under the direction of licensed plumbers of high standing, who were glad to have given them, as an exercise for their classes, a practical problem in house plumbing. The boys in the forging classes were not overlooked in the distribution of the work on the house. Many of the fixtures needed for use or ornament were designed to be made in the school forge shop. The girls designed and made rugs, curtains, portières, and cushions as a part of their school work in weaving and stencilling; and they contributed many decorative articles in clay, copper, leather, and other materials. Thus every technical department of the school was brought into service; for in the building of a house there is to be found something to enlist the interest of every boy and girl.
The Boys of the Forging Classes of the Technical High School Were Not Overlooked in the Distribution of the Work on the House
[Plate II]