May, 1903 – Terre Haute Newspaper – Contributed by Mike McCormick - Vigo County Historian
THE NEW VIGO COUNTY ORPHANAGE
Building When Finished Will Give to Vigo County and Terre Haute One
of the Most Pretentious Institutions of its Kind in the Country
The new orphans home east of the city now almost finished, will be one of the most complete institutions of its kind in the country, even now when the litter made by the workmen still remains, and many parts are still in the rough, a well formed idea of the completed buildings may be had, and in the mind of the visitor the thought arises that after all will those children who must here make their home during that period when the care and love of parents who should be the most powerful instrument in the shaping of their lives, will they after all, be any the less good men and women for having had to sacrifice that care.
Here everything is arranged that the children may get out of their childhood, that which is best, and which will tend to most uplift them. They will receive the care, the experience, the kindness of good teachers and nurses. They will have all the comforts of the good home. They will have light and air and a freedom which will be bounded only by the sense of duty that will be instilled into them and which should belong to all children. They will lack but one thing and that will be the love or at least that peculiar quality of love which the parent has for its child.
The orphanage is just four miles east of Terre Haute on the Brazil Road[1]. It stands on a sort of bluff, not abrupt but sloping gradually to the road in front. At the back are woods and fields. The site is bad in but one thing and that is that the railroad runs[2] directly in front at the foot of the incline, and over the railroad extends a great ugly steel viaduct belonging to the street railway company. It is the one drawback to the location, and years hence one can imagine some of the then old men and women, who had been inmates looking back to their early life, and remembering as the most familiar spot of the orphanage, the great ungainly viaduct with the cars climbing up the slope on one side and then shooting down the other.
At the back, however, the view is more to ones liking. The woods which will be cool and pleasant for the children to play in summer and the fields will spread out for them to wander over and get in touch with nature and learn to appreciate it and be ennobled by it. There they can look away off to the west and see the steeples of Terre Haute and the smoke telling of the busy bustle of the city and then can be thankful that they are four miles away from everything but childhood.
ARRANGEMENT OF BUILDINGS
The buildings themselves are found in number, designated to be the main building which stands in the center, and the cottages, “A”, “B”, and “C”. A and B standing on each side of the main building and facing and C is farther to the north looking in that direction. In the main building is the school room and the dining room; but this is all that it will be in common with the other buildings they being complete in themselves. Cottages A and B are exactly alike. The main building, as indeed, also are the others, is built in the colonial style, with huge round pillars forming a semi-circle about the portico in its front, and with the small panes of glass in the upper sashes of its windows. The windows all have the small panes in the upper sash and as you approach it, it has a solid substantial beauty which the red of the brick and the white of the trimmings serve to intensify.
On entering, one stops first into a little vestibule, finished in oak and then out into a broad corridor leading back for twenty or thirty feet. On the left of this corridor double doors open into the private living room of the Superintendent, and the northwest corner of this room is a grate of pressed brick. On the right is a room exactly similar which is to be the office of the superintendent with a smaller private office to the rear of it to be entered either from the hall or from the office of the superintendent. Back of the private office of the superintendent is the sleeping room of the matron and directly opposite this room a flight of steps ascend on the west side to the floor above the private dining room of the superintendent and his family, being to the north of these steps. The corridors end at two doors; one leading into the dining room on the west side, the other leading to the school room on the east. The school and dining rooms are both the same size and are large being about thirty by fifty feet. The school room is equipped with blackboards, and the dining room will have clusters of electric lights above the tables.
Back of these two rooms there is a corridor separating them from the kitchen serving room and laundry. The kitchen and indeed each one of these rooms are equipped with every known housekeeping device, a special place being provided for the range cupboards, sink, tables, refrigerators, ect. And in the cellar beneath there being a bakery. The serving room is a small room to the east of the kitchen and the laundry is east of that. The laundry, like the kitchen, is perfect in its equipment.
THE UPPER STORIES [ OF THE MAIN BUILDING ]
Ascending the stars from this rear hall, the first rooms that a person sees on reaching the second floor are two cells, one on each side of the long corridor, which runs almost from one end of the building to the other. The cells are known as the boys and girls detention rooms, and are placed in the building for the confinement of juvenile prisoners who would otherwise be sent to jail, there to mingle with the old and hardened criminals. Next to the girls detention cell on the east side, is the nurses’ room just off the sick ward, which joins it on the south. The sick ward is large and airy, and light, and pleasant. Adjoining it on the south is the bath room and then the nursery.
On the west side of the hall are sleeping rooms for the children, which though small are very comfortable. Each is entered through a sort of vestibule formed by the closets being built in the north east corners. The rooms here are four in number, but are supposedly intended for two. Three bed rooms for the superintendent occupy the front of the building and are separated from the rest of the upstairs by a corridor running east and west. At the east end of this corridor is the superintendent’s private bath room.
The third floor has been finished and the isolation ward for contagious diseases occupies its whole front. This floor is lighted throughout by dormer windows and the three sleeping rooms which occupy it, two on the west, one on the east, would seem to the visitor by far the most desirable in the building with their opportunities for cozy window seats and their excellent outlook over the surrounding country. A lavatory occupies a small room directly back of the isolation ward, and between that and the one sleeping room on the east.
The rear of this floor is made a storage place for the two water tanks which supply both the rain and well water to the institution. The water is pumped up by engines stationed under the serving room on the first floor.
THE COTTAGES
Cottages A and B you enter at first what is known as a day room for the children. This is large, and is designed for a living room when the children are indoors. The attendant’s day room joins it at the side and behind it an entry way leads from the outside directly into the children’s room. Back of this entry way a lavatory, and the baths comprising showers and foot baths. You can almost see already in your minds’ eye the picture which will be presented at that long narrow foot bath trough, on the summer nights when the sleepy little boys and girls file in and sit soaking their dirty little bare feet before hurrying off to their beds in the dormitories above. The upstairs is arranged as the down stairs, there being a large dormitory over the day room of the children and an attendants sleeping room over the attendants day room. The baths and closets are at the back.
In cottage C the arrangement is different as it arranged to accommodate both boys and girls under one roof. In this building the attendants’ room is in the center and the boys’ day room and girls’ day room are on either side. Baths, ect. Are at the back, and as in the case of the other two cottages the arrangements upstairs are exactly like those down.
The buildings throughout are finished in Georgia pine, and have the clean wholesome appearance which that wood gives. It has been a study apparently which architects to make the sanitary conditions and arrangements model and they system of ventilation is nearly perfect and the accumulation of dirt in the corners is provided against by making them turn wherever possible round. This is especially true of the base boards. The floors are hard wood throughout.
Thus the orphans of this county are to be provided for and to the observer it would seem that they are to be provided for well. It is a fact that all the ingenuity of the builders cannot imbue into the atmosphere of the structure, the spirit of motherly love, nor can the attendants through their kindliness and patience supply it; but in spite of this, the supplying of a home, inferior though it may be in that one quality, will mean the giving out to the world good men and good women to take their places in the battles of life, instead of ill fitted and warped boys and girls, and will have performed a mission incalculable.
1; also known as Highway 40 or Wabash Avenue
2; now the ‘Heritage Trail’ as the railroad has been removed
