The Dawn Project Helps Indiana Youth
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A "Child World" and a "People's Clubhouse": School ArchitectLlre and the Work-Study-Play System in Gary, Indiana, 1907-1930 DALE ALLEN GYURE The Gary, Indiana public school system that Superintendent William A. Wirt created and ran from 1907 to 1938 is a celebrated example of American progressive education. Wirt's "work-study-play" system (also known as the "platoon system" or the "Gary Plan") epitomized early twentieth century reformers' beliefs that scientific management and efficiency could enhance education . The early twentieth century educational and popular presses praised the system as the ideal solution to overcrowded schools and inefficient curriculums. 1 Since then educators have studied the "work-study-play" system extensively but no one has yet related it to the architectural spaces in which it operated.2 This essay will examine Gary public school buildings between 1907 and 1930 in order to understand better the relationship between architecture and education during this famous episode in American educational history. THE "WoRK-STUDY-PLAY" SYSTEM AND THE FIRST SCHOOLS The Gary, Indiana, story began among the empty sand dunes at the south end of Lake Michigan in 1906 when the United States Steel Company built from scratch a city for the employees of its new steel mill.3 In the fall of that year, the city organized a school system under a three-man Board of Trustees and named William Wirt, from Bluffton, Indiana, as Superintendent (fig.1). The first school building was a primitive oneroom structurejust south of the U.S. Steel mill. No documentation for this building remains, but it was probably similar to one-room schoolhouses across the country , with desks or benches, a blackboard, and probably a stove. By 1907, the Gary school system had expanded to four locations. The school buildings were not well built and some may have been originally constructed for other uses. At year's end the city's 530 students were being educated in three wooden structures and fifteen portable buildings.4 74 Aruus These makeshift buildings temporarily solved the overcrowding problem while Superintendent William A. Wirt dreamed of grander things. The Board of Education gave Wirt almost total control over the Gary schools. With this mandate, Wirt set up his efficiencybased "work-study-play" system. Wirt believed the traditional school, which assigned each child his or her own desk to be used throughout the day, wasted space and oppvrtunity.5 His solution was to combine the traditional school with a manual/vocational training program and extensive recreation facilities, and expose the students to all three in their daily routine. In the "work-studyplay " system each subject in the curriculum-English, art, geography, physical education, etc.-was taught in a room dedicated only to that subject. The school day Fig. 1. William A. Wirt, c. 1920. (Calumet Regional Archives, Indiana University Northwest) was divided into sixty-minute periods, and the children moved from room to room to pursue their various studies . Theoretically, this allowed all schoolrooms to be in constant use. Wirt described his "work-study-play" system in a 1913 report: While one set of children are in the school seats in the study room learning to read, ·write and figure from formal drill and text books, another set of children are on the playgrounds , in the gymnasiums, swimming pools, auditoriums, gardens, science laboratories and work shops. All of the school facilities are occupied all of the time. The pupil capacity of the study room is doubled. The per capita cost of the study room is much higher than the per capita cost of the work shops and playgrounds that are substituted for study rooms. Therefore the per capita cost of the combined study rooms, work shop and playground school is less than the per capita cost of the established exclusive study room school ... Thus the combined study room, work shop and playground schools are provided at a much lower per capita cost for investment in plant, annual maintenance of the plant and cost for instruction than the usual established exclusive study school.6 The last sentences are revealing. While Wirt urged the need to get children out of the streets and alleys and allow them to develop to their...
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