Location:
T171 .G42 G49x GTVA-610

Title:
[Woodshop]

Date:
189?

Content:
Written on back in pencil: K1105 - Woodshop, 1890s.

History:
The Shop Building contained a foundry, forge, boiler room and engine room to support the learning of wood work and metal work, with a view to designing and building working engines. The Shop Building also served as the school's physical plant. In the early hours of April 21, 1892, the Shop Building was destroyed by fire. In the interests of economy, it was decided that the new Shop Building would be built according to the original design. According to the Georgia School of Technology Announcements of that period, "The workshop is also of brick, two hundred and fifty feet long by eighty wide and two stories high. It is beautifully designed with reference to its use, and affords ample space for the various departments of instruction pursued in it. It contains boiler and engine rooms, wood shop, machine shop, forge room, and foundry. It has been equipped with a full assortment of tools, both hand and machine, by the best manufacturers. The shops are organized and managed as a manufacturing establishment, and the facilities are necessarily such as will give the best possible results. The shops are organized and managed as a manufacturing establishment, taking contracts for a great variety of work, both in wood and iron, and from this variety of work, always in process of construction, such parts are given the student to make as will afford him the best instruction at that particular stage of his course." The Georgia School of Technology Announcement for 1897-98 notes: "The first, or Apprentice year, is devoted entirely to wood-work. This includes a course of elementary instruction in laying out work with knife and pencil, and the use of ordinary hand tools, such as saws, planes, chisels, etc. This is followed by a course in elementary pattern-work, introducing the use of the turning lathe. After these elementary exercises, the student works altogether upon practical work, which, for want of a better name, may be classed as cabinet work. It consists for the most part of equipment for the shops or school, such as cabinets, tables, drawing-cases, drawing-boards, physical apparatus, etc. Instruction and practice is given in the use and care of the wood-working machinery, large and small circular saws, band and scroll saws, cylinder and buzz planers, boring-, mortising-, and tenoning-machines. Two days of eight hours each, a week, are devoted to shop practice throughout the Apprentice year. About two-thirds of this time is spent in the wood-working shop."