That’s what this place is all about -- a one-room school house, Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck and his forestry curriculum which he created as George Vanderbilt’s chief forester on the 125,000 acre Biltmore estate. Schenk succeeded Gifford Pinchot who was the first Biltmore forester and later first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service under President Teddy Roosevelt.
The school house building you see here is located on the original site but is a reconstruction of the one built in 1891 to educate children living in the area. This building housed the Biltmore School of Forestry from about 1898 until Dr. Schenck took it on the road in 1909. The last class was graduated in 1913 and that was the end of of the first forestry school in America.
Inside were benches and tables for learning. Classes were held in the mornings. Field work was in the woods in the afternoons and book study was expected in the lodgings at night. It was not an easy life for the students. Dr. Schenck believed in hard work, sink or swim.
The school house building you see here is located on the original site but is a reconstruction of the one built in 1891 to educate children living in the area. This building housed the Biltmore School of Forestry from about 1898 until Dr. Schenck took it on the road in 1909. The last class was graduated in 1913 and that was the end of of the first forestry school in America.
Inside were benches and tables for learning. Classes were held in the mornings. Field work was in the woods in the afternoons and book study was expected in the lodgings at night. It was not an easy life for the students. Dr. Schenck believed in hard work, sink or swim.
The school house was a church on Sundays. Dr. Schenck was the minister. He purchased a pedal-organ from Montgomery Ward’s Catalog for $28.43 “to improve the singing on Sunday.”
The cost to attend the Biltmore School in 1906 was $1,100 which included tuition ($300), room and board ($350) and laundry, books and supplies ($150). Travel to and from school cost an average of $300. In addition each student was expected to have his own horse and be responsible for the feed and care for that horse.
The third photo shows Dr. Schenck’s office which was used to write textbooks and grade papers. There was a secretary who was there every day, banging on a primitive typewriter.
Dr. Schenck was an interesting person, educated in Darmstadt and University of Tuebingen (Forestry). His salary was $2,500 per year and he was paid nothing extra to run the school, except maybe for the tuition which he split with Mr. Vanderbilt. After the school closed, Schenck returned to Germany where he remained for the rest of his life. In 1914, Vanderbilt sold the Pisgah Forest to the U.S. Government for 2.5 times what he paid for it and it became the Pisgah National Forest.
2 comments:
Dad,
How did you hear about this? Very neat sight seeing trip. I bet a real highlight.
We heard about this from the Workamper Magazine which advertises for volunteers. We applied and were accepted. We had no idea until we got here that the place was so interesting. I've been reading Dr. Schenck's autobiography.
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