PLAN OF CHARTER OAK SCHOOL HOUSE, HARTFord, Conn.

The building for the Public School on Charter Oak Street, in the South Meadow, within the Colt embankment, was erected in 1871, at a cost of $47,000. In this aggregate is included the cost of the site, and piling the foundations ($5,000), of the heating apparatus ($3,500), and of the iron fence and sidewalks ($4,550).

The building is 95 × 54 feet on the ground, and three stories high above the basement, and is surmounted by a French roof, from which rises the belltower.

The base of the building, for three feet above the ground, is of Portland stone, laid in cement, and resting upon substantial piling driven to the depth of fifteen to twenty-five feet. The walls of the building above the stone base are faced with pressed brick, and the caps and sills are of brown stone.

The brick walls are hollow, and constructed with heavy outside pilasters through which the ventilating flues and chimneys are carried, thus leaving the inside surface of the walls plain for blackboards. For this reason, also, the hot air flues are all constructed within the main central partition wall.

The building has four entrances, one at each side, and one at each end. The side doors are designed for the use of teachers and visitors, and the two doors at the ends (one for males and the other for females), opening direct into the play-rooms, are for the use of the pupils.

The floor of the basement is of cement, and elevated some twenty inches above the side walks, and the grounds are so graded as to give them a gradual descending slope from the building outward.

The basement is twelve feet in height, and divided into rooms as shown on the plan. The two play-rooms are each 32 × 25 feet. The school-rooms are each 32 × 25 feet, and the wardrobes 17×5 feet.

These two stories are each 144 feet in height in the clear.

On the third floor

is an assembly room, 58×52 feet, which is furnished with a beautiful 'Steck' piano. This story is 16 feet high.

All the school-rooms are provided with platforms, chairs and school desks of the best models for the use of the teachers. The chairs and desks occupied by the pupils are of the most approved patterns, the seats being hung on pivots so as to be thrown up or down at the pleasure or convenience of the occupants in taking or leaving their places. This arrangement also enables the janitor the more readily to keep the rooms, and especially the floors, neat and tidy. The school-rooms are all large and commodious, and will comfortably seat five hundred pupils.

Each room has its wardrobe and hydrant on the same floor for the use of the pupils, and directly over these, suitable wardrobes are arranged for the use of the teachers, making the whole as complete and perfect as possible in every particular.

Building Committee.-Hugh Harbison, Leverett Brainard, and Horace Lord. The building was set apart for its educational uses on the 6th of September, 1871, by appropriate religious exercises, and addresses by Rev. C. R. Fisher, Acting School Visitor, Mr. Harbison and Mr. Lord of the District Committee, Mr. Chauncey Harris, Principal of the South School, President Jackson and Prof. Huntington of Trinity College, and Rev. Dr. Childs of the Theological Seminary.

PLANS OF STEVENS' INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, HOBOKEN, N. J.

THE STEVENS' INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY* in Hoboken, New Jersey, occupies a large lot (425 by 200 feet), which was left by the munificent benefactor (Edwin A. Stevens), as a site of an Institution of Learning, near his own residence on the heights of Hoboken, overlooking the bay and the cities of New York and Hoboken. In addition to this valuable lot for a site, Mr. Stevens left at the discretion of his executors a sum of money, which the executors have appropriated to the maximum sum allowed ($650,000), for the foundation and establishment of an Institution of Learning, which, in view of the existing needs of the country at large, and of the personal interest always manifested by Mr. Stevens in the development of the mechanic arts, they have determined to be a School of Mechanical Engineering, and have erected on the site directed a building for its accommodation.

The entire length of the main building is 180 feet front, by 44 feet deep; of the west wing, 60 feet by 30 feet wide; and of the center wing or Lecture Hall, 80 feet by 50 feet wide-giving a floor space of nearly one acre. Besides the room in the basement which is all utilized for the purposes of the Institute, there are thirty-four rooms set apart for the several professors and their classes, with abundant accommodations for the library, laboratories, model rooms, and larger and smaller lecture and class-rooms. We have as yet in the United States no single edifice so admirably arranged and richly equipped with all the appliances of instruction, experiment and illustration, as that of the Stevens' Institute.

The building has been erected, and all the laboratories and architectural constructions and fixed appliances have been incorporated with special reference to the subjects to be taught and illustrated. In the portions devoted to Chemistry and Metallurgy, tables with pneumatic tank, and all the conveniences for generating and laying on the gases, and securing downward draught for escape of fumes, with store-room, closets and drawers for large and small pieces of apparatus; in the portions devoted to Physics and the entire Physical Department, the laboratory is divided into alcoves, each devoted to some special subject of research, such as (1) Molecular Physics; 2, General Laws of Statics and Dynamics; 3, Hydrostatics and Hydrodynamics; 4, Pneumatics; 5, General Laws of Heat; 6, Special Relations of Heat to Steam; 7, Electrical Measurements; 8, Magnetism; 9, Sources of Electricity; 10, Light, each with its appropriate constructions and appliances; in the rooms devoted to Mechanical work, connections with the steam-engines are made, screw cutting lathe, planer, gear-cutter and milling-machine, with a drill, a punch, as well as all necessary hand tools, are provided; in the room devoted to Optics, all requisite space and constructural aids are given, to make available the largest and best apparatus for class illustrations of optical phenomena, or for the prosecution of higher studies; and so of the other portions devoted to Mechanical Engineering, Photography, &c; the building is constructed and furnished with all the recent adaptations and appliances.

* A full description of this School of Mechanical Engineering, which embraces a high general culture, as well as technical training, with a list of its drawings, apparatus and models, will be given in our next Volume (for 1873).