Location:
T171 .G42 G49x 1888-1899

Title:
Shops. Academic Building

Date:
1898?

Content:
Frontispiece photograph of the Shop Building and Academic Building in the Annual Catalog of the Georgia School of Technology Announcement for 1897-1898

History:
This photograph shows the two buildings that comprised the first campus of the Georgia School of Technology, which opened its doors in October, 1888. The two buildings were erected in 1888 in the Peters Park area of Atlanta. The first campus of the Georgia School of Technology was nine acres and two buildings in the area bounded by North Avenue, Fowler Avenue, and Cherry Street, an area selected over competing areas in Grant Park and on Boulevard, for reasons of cost and best proximity to Atlanta business, railroads and industry. The two buildings were designed by the firm of Bruce and Morgan in the prevailing style of the times, High Victorian according to the tenets of John Ruskin. Ruskinian architecture, in revulsion against unprincipled labor practices and sordid urban factories, harkened back in its civic architecture to nobler ideals symbolized by towers and heroic ornamentation. The Academic and Shop Buildings were imbued in their designs with the moral purpose of instructing the future industrialists of the New South in the habits of industriousness and skill--developing engineers who were also civic leaders and businessmen of the highest caliber. The focal point of each building was its tower, a symbol of the school's lofty mission. The original Shop Building was destroyed by fire in April 1892. The Shop Building as rebuilt in 1892-93 is more utilitarian, less ornate and majestic than the Academic Building, with its dramatic tower and elaborate decoration. The 1892 Shop Building reflected the frugality in replacing a destroyed building originally costing $20,000 for less than $12,000 but also the increasing dominance of the school culture over the shop culture, as Georgia Tech moves from an emphasis on apprenticeship and trade development to scholarship and academic pursuits. This new emphasis on the academic was reflected by the resignation of the first President, Dr. Isaac S. Hopkins. Isaac S. Hopkins was President of Emory College in Oxford when he was selected to be the Georgia School of Technology's first president in 1888. He was described as that "rare combination of physicist and theologian." He had a strong interest in the value of learning a practical trade and had established at Emory College a "rudimentary course in mechanics." He had such a strong interest in the field of mechanics that at some point, presumably while at The Georgia School of Technology, he worked as a master mechanic in Atlanta's railroad shop. The initial faculty was nicely balanced between "art" and "technic," with five professors and four shop foremen. In 1888, "the course of study was designed to meet the need for training in the industrial and mechanical arts; the methods were such as had been found advantageous in the polytechnics o egree offered was in Hall, Professor of Mathematics and West Point graduate was appointed President and began an ambitious degrees of electrical and civil engineering were established.