Packer Collegiate Institute - Pelican Yearbook (Brooklyn, NY)

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36 The Peteleer Collegiate Institute The Institute is accessible to students from all parts of the boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan. It stands on Brooklyn I-Ieights, half a block Westward from the Borough I-Iall. Its grounds and buildings havea frontage of two hundred and fifty feet on both .Ioralemon and LivingstonsStreets. A garden on Living- ston Street, laid out in grassfplots and Walks, shaded by large trees, is freely used by the students. , The buildings are adapted to the Wants of a thoroughly graded school.. Besides the chapel, the studios, the laboratories, the libra- ry, and the gymnasium, it has forty recitation rooms. Its halls are spacious, its ceilings are high, its main stairways rise but six inches at a step, its rooms are large and airy. Its Utis elevator is furnished With every appliance for safety. The chapel, a beautiful Gothic inte- rior, has sittings for eight hundred students. The gymnasium is one hundred feet long, and is furnished with all desirable appliances for the physical training of young Women. The lecture-rooms for classes in physics and chemistry are well equipped for the con-

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'lff'Z -Y join- -UFCCK Col- oms, : use ling- ents, out- 1 the 1 the paid nsti- heck r the been e by 3 .zo 1 5 'The main Buiining. The main building of the Institute was opened for the admission of students on the oth day of November, 1854. lt stands upon the site previously occupied by the Brook- lyn Female Academy. That school had been organized by public-spirited citizens in 1845, but its career was ended by the burning of its building on the last day of December, 1852. lVlrs. Harriet L. Packer gave sixty-live thousand dollars for the erec- tion of a new building in memory of her husband. A special charter was obtained from the Legislature on the 19th day of March, 1853, incorporating the Packer Col- legiate Institute. A A The Institute gives systematic and thor- ough training through the grades of the grammar school and the high school, and overlaps two years of the usual courses at college. lts curriculum is as advanced as that of any American school below the rank of a college.

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The Packer Collegiate Institute 37 venience of teachers and students, and lab- oratories have carefully planned modern im- provements. The furniture of study-rooms and recita- tion-rooms is arranged with regard for the health and comfort of the school. Each student has elbow-room. Her studying is done at a desk in the room of the grade to which she belongs, and when summoned to recitation she is relieved from Weariness by changing her seat. Not a chair in any room is fastened to the floor. lt is therefore possi- ble to vary the arrangement of the furniture from time to time, and to give a class the re- lief that comes from a new order of things. Apparatus for heating by indirect radia- tion and for ventilation is used in every room. With the mercury out of doors stand- ing at IOO Fahrenheit, the building is heated at 680 above zero, While the pressure on the boilers does not exceed six pounds to the square inch. The boilers are in vaults out- side the walls of the building. Half a million cubic feet of fresh air are forced through the building every hour.