Seattle Unveils State-of-the-Art Pacific School
A look inside the new $43,000 brick schoolhouse featuring gymnasiums, 'dry' closets, and advanced ventilation.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Several hundred parents and pupils yesterday visited the new Pacific school, which will be opened for the reception of pupils tomorrow. The building is situated on the block bounded by Barclay, Jessie, Kenny, and Houghton streets, in the Eastern Addition. It is built of brick with stone trimmings and cedar interior finish, and cost about $43,000. Besides twelve school rooms designed to accommodate about 600 pupils, there is on the second floor a commodious principal's office and a teachers' retiring room. In the basement are the heating and ventilating apparatus, fuel storage, and two gymnasiums, one for the boys and the other for the girls. A notable feature is the Smead system of heating and ventilating, which uses dry closets in the basement to do away with the noise, odor, and expense of traditional water closets.
“By this system the noise, odor and expense of water closets are done away with and the dry closet substituted.”
In 1893, the 'Smead system' was the cutting edge of school sanitation. Today, Seattle school districts deal with different infrastructure challenges, from modernizing aging buildings to the environmental health concerns that would have baffled the architects of the Pacific School.
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