Page:A history of the Michigan state normal school (now Normal college) at Ypsilanti, Michigan, 1849-1899 (IA historyofmichiga00putniala).pdf/36



apparatus room, a museum, a small reception room, cloak rooms, and a lecture room seated for sixty students, and a room of moderate size for the model school. The second floor contained the chapel or general assembly room, which was also used for the ladies’ study hall, and would accommodate about two hundred pupils, a small library room, and another room used sometimes for a music room and sometimes for recitation purposes. The third floor was occupied by the gentlemen's study hall with seats for one hundred and twenty students, the drawing rooms, and recitation rooms of the teachers of Mathematics and of the Ancient and Modern Languages.

The Old Gymnasium.

The matter of providing means for proper physical culture in connection with the normal school received attention from the very opening of the institution. The Principal and other members of the board of instruction were zealous in seeking to obtain apparatus and other conveniences to enable them to give training in gymnastics and calisthenics. ‘The Board of visitors for 1859, in their report, earnestly seconded the efforts of the faculty. The Board of Education also labored in the same direction. In their report for 1860 they urged the need of a building for physical culture and asked for a small appropriation for the erection of such a building. The Legislature failed to make the desired appropriation, and the request was renewed the next year, but.without success. The Board, however, were so deeply impressed with the importance of the matter that they contrived to save enough out of the ordinary appropriation made for the school, increased by some private contributions, to erect a small building at an expense of twelve hundred dollars, and to furnish it with a fair amount of inexpensive apparatus.

Before the completion of the building, by the joint efforts of teachers and students, some cheap apparatus had been provided and arrangements had been made for regular instruction in physical exercises. With the new building it became possible to make the work more systematic and thorough. But as no special teacher could be employed for this department, the instruction and train-