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PLANS OF SCHOOL-HOUSES IN NEW HAVEN, CONN.

SKINNER SCHOOL.

THE Skinner School, named in honor of Aaron N. Skinner, former Mayor, and an earnest friend of public schools, erected in 1867, at a cost of $35,000, including lot, fence, &c., is on the corner of State and Summer streets.

The main building is seventy by eighty-eight feet, and two stories high. Each story is divided into six rooms, with a hall ten feet wide in the centre. There is a projection in front five by twenty-two feet, which, besides extending the hall, gives closets on each side for teachers' clothing and for storing books, In the rear there is an addition sixteen by thirty-six feet, which, maps, &c. besides a recitation-room connected with the principal's room, contains the stairs for the pupils, which being separated from the main building by a wall, will, in case of fire, be the last to be destroyed. The three rooms on each side of the hall are connected by doorways, leaving a passage-way round the entire building, near the outer wall. This plan was adopted for safety in case of fire. The furnaces being all in the centre of the building, fire can only commence there, in which case the teachers and children would find a safe egress through Double doors are placed at these doors to the protected staircases in the rear. these openings, one opening into each room, which prevents noise from adjoining rooms as effectually as a brick wall.

In four rooms on the first floor, a dressing-room six feet wide is formed by running a screen across the room seven feet high, in which the younger children hang their clothing, under the supervision of the teacher. The dressing-rooms for the older children are in the basement, each occupying the space of two school-rooms, as seen in the plan.

There are four furnaces placed side by side in the centre, an arrangement conducing alike to convenience and safety. Each furnace heats three rooms on one floor. The furnaces are supplied with air from a room in the basement of the rear addition, into which air is freely admitted through two windows cov ered with wire cloth. The air tubes go out at the bottom of this room, and pass under the floor of the dressing-rooms to the furnaces. By this plan all disturbance from outside currents of air is avoided.

The building is ventilated by means of four chimneys, each two feet square inside, up through the centre of which passes a cast iron smoke-pipe, one for each furnace. The rooms are ventilated by registers opening into these chimneys, the heat of the smoke-pipe producing a very strong draft.

A register from each furnace opens into the hall, by means of which rooms can at any time be cooled off by shutting its register and opening that in the hall.

The street water is introduced into the dressing-rooms in the basement, and into the halls of the first and second floors.

The interior is finished with white chestnut wood, except the floors, which are yellow pine.

Several important improvements have been recently made in the school buildings of New Haven, making them to conform to the plan of the Skinner School, of a room for only fifty scholars under a class teacher. In the Eaton School, the large rooms on the third floor have been converted into two each. And in the Webster School, two large rooms in the octagon have

been made into four very convenient rooms; and the large room in the second floor of the main building has been divided. This is the final change in the original plan on which the Eaton and Webster Schools were inaugurated, of having large rooms of a hundred or more pupils, with one or two assistants who heard these classes in recitation-rooms adjoining. It is now found that better teaching and better discipline is obtained in rooms containing about fifty scholars, entirely under one teacher's control, a system which now exists in all our schools.-D. C. Gilman's Report for 1867.

Indicates a Recitation room connected with the Principal's. All other rooms on this floor are School rooms. The rooms in the first floor correspond.

SCHOOL-HOUSES IN SAN FRANCISCO.

LINCOLN SCHOOL.

THE Lincoln School building was completed in August, 1865, and cost, including furniture, $100,000. It is designed exclusively for boys, and accommodates one thousand pupils, exclusive of the large hall in the attic story. It is situated on the corner of Fifth and Market streets, one hundred and seventyfive feet square, and is inclosed in front by a brick wall and balustrade fence.

The plan of the building is cruciform, one hundred and forty-one and a-half feet long, by sixty-three and a-half feet wide in the body; the wings are eighteen by thirty-three feet, and the whole covers a superficial area of ten thousand one hundred and thirty-seven feet. It is built of brick, in the most substantial manner, with a basement, two stories, and an attic, terminating with a Mansard roof, which is surmounted by a cupola, and surrounded with a balustrade.

The walls of the basement and principal story are two feet thick; above that, they are eighteen inches thick. The joists of all the floors are three by seventeen inches. The height of the basement in the clear is eleven feet; principal and second stories, fifteen feet; while the attic or assembly hall, which forms one room throughout the building, is eighteen feet in the clear.