A MODEL SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOM.
THE Sunday school is the door to the Church through which enters the great majority of its members. This fact alone would account for the increasing interest that the Church now manifests toward the school. As the institution which trains the young for the Church, and leads both young and old into the Church, the Sunday school is entitled to the Church's support and care.
The housing of the Sunday school is one of the most important subjects that can come before the Church as the guardian of the school. Too often the work of the school is impeded by unsuitable and inconvenient quarters. Just as the public school building now claims the attention of architects and sanitary engineers, the Sunday school hall is also attracting notice.
It is only twenty-two years since the first building thoroughly adapted for the uses of the Sunday school was erected at Akron, O. This building, the joint conception of the Hon. Lewis Miller, superintendent, and Mr. Jacob Snyder, architect, has furnished most of the ideas peculiar to Sunday school construction, and is therefore entitled to preeminence in the record. Others have improved upon the details of the Akron plan, but its fundamental principles have never been superseded, and can never be. Those principles are only two, and they seem almost incompatible with each other. They have been called "aloneness" and "togetherness;" that is, that each class in certain departments shall be isolated in a separate room, and yet that all the classes may be brought together into one room for general exercises without delay, without confusion, and without the change of seats by the classes.
Among the dozen or more Sunday school buildings on the Akron plan one of the most convenient and most complete, yet not one of the most expensive, is that connected with the Methodist Episcopal Church in Plainfield, N. J. As this was for twenty years the church home of the Rev. Bishop John H. Vincent, the Sunday school bears the appropriate name of "Vincent Chapel." The plans were drawn by Mr. Oscar S. Teale, architect. Mr. Teale was at that time the efficient secretary of the school, and added to an architect's knowledge a worker's practical acquaintance with the needs of the Sunday school. The chapel, as may be seen by the diagrams, embraces a large room, with eighteen smaller class rooms around it, nine upon each floor. The partitions of the class rooms are so arranged as to offer no obstruction to the line of vision from any seat in the building to the superintendent's desk and the blackboard fastened to the wall back of it. Thus the superintendent can see and be seen by every pupil and teacher in the building. He can also be heard with perfect ease in every class room, as the acoustic properties of the building are excellent.
The main room is used by the Junior Department, in which the scholars are from eleven to sixteen years of age. The classes are seated according to grade, the "first year Juniors" on the front row of classes; the "second year Juniors" on the second row, etc., for four rows, the boys on the superintendent's right, the girls on his left. Each year, on "Promotion Sunday," the classes move one row farther from the desk, and the new classes formed from the Intermediate Department take the front row of seats.
The nine class rooms on the ground floor are used as follows: In the left-hand corner, just where the most of the scholars pass in entering and leaving, is the secretary's room. Next is the "fifth year Junior," into which all the girls enter after four years in the Junior Grade, leaving their former teachers for a new one. In this class they stay either one or two years, according to age and acquirements, and from it are promoted to the Senior Department. The third room is that of the "Ladies' Bible Class;" the fourth, the "Reserve Class." Next comes the church parlor, seating a hundred people, and used by a large Senior Class. The next room is for the "first year Intermediate," that is, those just advanced from the Primary Department; the seventh, the "second year Intermediate;" the eighth, a "young men's Senior Class;" the ninth, and last, the boys' section of the "fifth year Junior," the largest class of boys in the Junior Department.
On the ground floor are four entrances, one at each corner. As the chapel stands at the rear of the church it was necessary to have the principal entrance on each side of the room facing the school. This is a slight drawback, as a rear entrance would be preferable, in order not to distract attention to the late comers.
The partitions between the class rooms are windows of ground glass of amber color. They are movable, so that classes can be united whenever desirable. Those between class rooms and the main room are double doors of ground glass, so hung that they may be swung aside easily, and arranged when open not to interfere with the line of vision. All the rooms are well lighted and well ventilated; and the main room, when all the rooms are closed, has abundant light and air from a clear story above, with movable windows.