TAGS<\/strong>: Land Use Plan for Pine Mountain, c. 1913; Katherine Pettit<\/span>; <\/span>Ethel de Long Zande<\/span>; physical environment; buildings; landscaping; built environment; Mary Rockwell Hook; Harlan County, KY; women architects; Julia Morgan; Hindman Settlement School; horse and train travel; fundraising speech; Old Log; Big Log; architectural planning; school children; farmland; Darwin D. Martin; farm engineers; Mr. Browning; Burton Rogers; \u00a0William Creech; subsistence farming;<\/span><\/p>\n \n When Katherine Pettit<\/a> and Ethel de Long Zande<\/a> began their visioning dialog for a school in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, they\u00a0had\u00a0many discussions regarding what the physical environment of their school would look like; what buildings would be necessary and how those buildings might be situated\u00a0on the land; how the land should be landscaped and how buildings might be\u00a0integrated with the natural landscape —\u00a0and a myriad of other plans associated with the built environment and the existing terrain.<\/p>\n In 1913\u00a0the services of\u00a0Mary Rockwell Hook<\/a>, a Kansas City, Missouri, architect, were engaged by Pettit and de Long to help them in their planning process for the 426 acres of land they had secured in Harlan County, Kentucky. Miss Hook had never met either Miss Pettit or Miss de Long before she received their letter inviting her to work with them to create a school for children of the area.<\/p>\n Miss\u00a0Hook was one of the first women architects in the United States along with her colleague, Julia Morgan, who designed the so-called ‘Hearst Castle’ in San Simon, California, and was a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts Architecture Academy\u00a0in Paris, France, in 18??]<\/p>\n She had been introduced to Pine Mountain through a mutual friend at Hindman Settlement School, where both Miss Pettit and Ethel de Long met and worked. \u00a0Hook’s friend at Hindman had a mutual friend at \u00a0Wellesley College and\u00a0she recommended Hook to Pettit. With the invitation in hand and on the mutual friend’s recommendation, Hook\u00a0packed up and began the adventure of getting from California where she was working, first to Hindman and then to the proposed Harlan County, Kentucky, school site. Her story of that physical journey in 1913 played a role in her\u00a0own mental design journey for new school.<\/p>\n She had agreed to come to Pine Mountain to discuss the School and its proposed building plan under two conditions:<\/p>\n 1. \u00a0 That, [if] after talking things over and they discovered their architectural ideals were radically different, that they would not proceed;<\/p>\n 2. \u00a0 That, if she took on the work, she would want to be present at the very start in order to lay out a comprehensive plan for the whole development.<\/p>\n Miss Hook began her long journey to Kentucky and her life-long fascination with the Pine Mountain Settlement School. \u00a0She took a train across country to near Hindman and was met by a horse sent by Miss de Long, who was still at Hindman where she was just ending her employment.\u00a0She then rode the\u00a0twenty-six miles from the train station to the Hindman Settlement\u00a0School where she reviewed the central buildings at the School. Hindman had been Katherine Pettit’s first school and knowledge of the facility and its construction and functions were an important part of her visit. She also attended the commencement ceremonies of the institution. The following morning she was given a horse by the Hindman School on which she rode\u00a0some fifty miles to Pine Mountain, accompanied by Ethel de Long. At the School she was received by Miss Pettit and her fledgling staff. On receiving Miss Hook and the “gift” horse, Pettit reportedly\u00a0sent the horse back to Hindman, saying\u00a0she could not afford to pay the gift’s\u00a0upkeep.<\/p>\n Hook\u00a0describes her first few days at\u00a0Pine Mountain in a brief sketch, which is part of a speech<\/a> she gave to promote Pine Mountain Settlement\u00a0School and to raise money in 1920. The speech is among Hook’s early records in the archive at Pine Mountain Settlement School. The following is an excerpt:<\/p>\n For the first week, we three tramped over their acres, studying the different streams for water supply, levels and sites for buildings and gradually laying out a comprehensive plan for the complete development of a school of industry for 150 children. Our policy, in general, was to treasure all the lower lands for agriculture as every inch would be needed to feed the school, to use the steeper places for building, to concentrate all buildings of a public nature toward the center of the property and to use the two flanking ends of our valley for cottages.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Near the entrance to the property was a tumble-down log cabin with remains of two lovely stone chimneys at the ends. This we decided to restore for our first building<\/strong> and it is known as the ‘Old Log House<\/a>.’ The next effort, way at the end of the valley, overlooking a stream that is thick with rhododendron, was to be Miss Pettit’s house. The logs that were hauled for this house were the most beautiful I have ever seen. Some of them were forty-two feet long and all uniformly 5 x 12 inches. When I see people who wish to imitate a hand-hewn beam having then hacked up with an axe, I always think of the smooth perfection of Miss Pettit’s beams. This house we called ‘Big Log House<\/a>.’ It is the home of twenty-five children. We knew that logs were too expensive to continue to use as a building material, much as we regretted it. There was no sawmill anywhere, so the only thing to do was to get one and operate it. This was done and it has become a great factor in the community. The raw materials out of which a great school had to be built were right about us; These were great boulders of rock, tall straight chestnuts, oaks, and poplars. Ethel de Long’s oratory, for someone, had to find the funds and the courage of them both. No man in the district had ever built anything but a log house, usually one room.<\/em><\/p>\n Go to ARCHITECTURAL PLANNING FOR BUILDINGS – A TALK BY M.R. HOOK Mary R. Hook was intrigued by the Pine Mountain Settlement School proposal. After her initial journey to the Pine Mountain valley, she was at once enchanted by the enthusiasm of Pettit and de Long, but, more, she was enchanted by the land. She continued under the spell of the rugged land in all her planning.<\/p>\n While she began a relationship with the School as its architect, her work as its landscape <\/em>architect was equally important. She reportedly established a land-use guide, soon designed her own summer home at the School, and later became a board member charged with recommendations on buildings and grounds. She continued her involvement with the School until she was unable to travel, all the while keeping a sharp eye on the School’s use of land and buildings through her many friends at the institution.<\/p>\n ETHEL DE LONG AND EARLY LAND USE OBSERVATIONS<\/strong><\/p>\n Ethel de Long in her first Dear Friends Letter, 1913<\/a>, describes much of the clearing activity during the first year<\/p>\n My dear friend: <\/em> If our neighbors’ hogs annoy us because they consider our first, modest attempt at a garden a pigs’ paradise with no St. Peter to guard the rickety stake and rider rail fence, we listen to the woodmen far up the Mountain, cutting locust posts for the five foot “woven wire, hog\u2014<\/em>proof” fence we want to put around our paradise this fall. When we have not so much as a\u00a0plank for a tiny bookshelf in this country of wonderful\u00a0trees but no sawmills, we think\u00a0of our\u00a0splendid mill, given us by [a] friend who well understood our needs, waiting and ready for\u00a0<\/em>the great chestnut and\u00a0poplar logs that are being cut from the School forest. \u00a0We long for room to take in the children (and just\u00a0how Irresistible they are you can see from our summer kindergarten teacher’s\u00a0testimony that in all her ninety-two enrolled in Cleveland <\/em>she has none so winning as her little Pine Mountain Brit \u00a0— the same who, mindful of a past punishment, one day said to her,\u00a0“I reckon you’ll have to sot me on the Lonesome Seat, I ain’t aiming to hurry this morning”) ; when we feel with the fathers and mothers hereabouts that year is a right smart spell to wait for a\u00a0schoolhouse we can write you, our friends outside, of our great need for one and ask you to help us build it!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n I called this a wilderness from the phrase of a conspicuous literary man who visited us this summer and said he thought us the most fortunate of people with such a chance to build a school in the wilderness. His enthusiasm sprang from the fact that our mountains, remote,\u00a0undeveloped, and rough though they are, are full of children. Up and down Greasy Creek neighbors live scarcely more than a “sight” apart and Lick, Rockhouse, Laurel, and Sang branches are not mere lonely streams girt with magnificent rhododendron thickets but have each its own homesteads and hearth fires. …<\/em><\/p>\n The land-use guide possibly established by Hook and endorsed by Pettit and de Long is one of the most intriguing documents she left to the School. In many ways, it is a forerunner of the environmental programs that later evolved at the School. Through the years the plan also guided changes to the physical landscape of the institution \u00a0— and there were many. \u00a0For example, this letter from Katherine Pettit [?] to Darwin D. Martin,<\/a> a member of the Board of Trustees, \u00a0describes the efforts to remediate the flooding of the main farmland in front of Laurel House:<\/p>\n image # P1050683 My dear Mr. Martin:-<\/em> He came yesterday, a very able and wise man, and he spent much time going over\u00a0<\/em>the whole situation, asking questions and thinking about it. He even went away\u00a0<\/em>down on Greasy to see what the situation was there and up the head of the creek.<\/em><\/p>\n He thinks that if we do just as you suggested — begin to straighten the creek nearby\u00a0<\/em>the swimming pool<\/a> on to the place just in front of the office — that they will solve the\u00a0<\/em>problem of flooding our garden. He told Mr. Browning [Farm manager] just how to do it, although he\u00a0<\/em>said what Mr. Browning had suggested was just what he would have done. And they\u00a0<\/em>think it will cost around $500.00. We are beginning it just as soon as we get more\u00a0<\/em>of our farm work done if you still want us to do it. I shall be glad to hear from you\u00a0<\/em>about it right away.<\/em><\/p>\n He advises as not to do anything about repairing the creek in the mill yard [Saw Mill Hollow] until we\u00a0<\/em>get this done — that this is the very first and most important thing to do.<\/em><\/p>\n Faithfully yours,<\/em> Though advanced in age, Mary Rockwell Hook continued to maintain her consultations\u00a0with Pine Mountain, first from Kansas and later from her\u00a0Siesta Keys, Florida, home. She held a particularly deep affection for Burton Rogers<\/a>, (School Principal and the Director of Pine Mountain Settlement from 1941 until 1983). She dedicated her autobiography, “This and That”<\/em> to Burton and kept up a lively correspondence with him until her death\u00a0in 1978<\/span>\u00a0at the age of 101.<\/p>\n One of the stories that seemed to stay with Mary Rockwell Hook was one that described the travels of the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, who was in eastern Kentucky about the same time as Hook’s first journey into the region. She relates that as the government head rode through the area studying the resources and meeting with the “leading spirits of the neighborhood,” he was directed to Uncle William Creech,<\/a> who gave the land for Pine Mountain Settlement. Trying to understand the economics of the region, the Secretary asked Uncle William, “About how much money does it take for an ordinary family to live upon per year?” To which Uncle William is reported to have replied, “Well, for an ordinary family of, we’ll say, an even dozen, it would take in the neighborhood of $25.00 a year.”<\/p>\n This was perhaps the best endorsement of the subsistence farming practiced in the region and of the importance of farmland to the lives of the surrounding community. Subsistence farming has many negative connotations and nay-sayers but the lessons to be learned in this close association with the land is a lesson that is too quickly going away. The later land-use planning owes much to the subsistence farming practices of those who came first to the rich Pine Mountain valley.<\/p>\n Landscape plan for Pine Mountain<\/strong>\u00a0–\u00a0landscape plan needs no fundamental change; must\u00a0preserve what we have to reflect spiritual ideals of the school; must keep a natural setting; preserve weed land borders ; reflect wild beauty in foundation plantings ; cultivation must not dominate the native pattern; must follow founders’ ideals where possible; avoid artificial effects ; maintain harmony in the details ;\u00a0[pages 1-3]<\/p>\n General considerations<\/strong> that should govern all landscape work at Pine Mountain [page 3]<\/p>\n Details\u00a0that need attention: <\/strong>[page 3]<\/p>\n Foundation Plantings<\/strong> –\u00a0need to be thoroughly done over; when to transplant; use Indian arrowweed; Laurel House plantings ; [pages 3-4]<\/p>\n Stream Banks<\/strong> – use of\u00a0rock walls; shrubs will hold big tides ; [page 4]<\/p>\n Unused Land <\/strong>–\u00a0<\/strong>plant fruit trees between road and branch; plant trees for cabinet wood on Grape Vine Knoll ;\u00a0[pages 4-5] Road Edges<\/strong> – problem of\u00a0cinders washing into grass; need retaining walls ; [page 5]<\/p>\n Laurel House Garden <\/strong>–\u00a0need for a flower garden ; care of bulbs ;\u00a0[page 5]<\/p>\n New Planting <\/strong>–\u00a0need to mask the dump; nuisance of honeysuckle; preservation of grass; chapel plantings; Infirmary Hill should not be thinned;\u00a0cultivate natural flower gardens; develop Snake Path; a possibility of\u00a0outdoor theatre ; [pages 5-6]<\/p>\n Outdoor Living Rooms<\/strong> – wildwood living\u00a0room at each house;\u00a0possibility of\u00a0outdoor theatre ;<\/p>\n A\u00a0Few Negatives<\/strong> – nuisance of honeysuckle; paths cause gullying;<\/p>\n
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\n<\/a>for the complete transcription of Mary Rockwell Hook’s speech.<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nI wish you could be here today, in the midst of this\u00a0wilderness where we are building a settlement school, and see the beginnings\u00a0of things. It takes\u00a0\u00a0a long time to get two- hundred and thirty-four acres of neglected land in shape for a model rural school but if we grow a little discouraged now and then we have only to go and watch “Carter” Coots and Solomon Day<\/a> working against the weeds and underbrush along our creek banks with the love of battle plain in every stroke\u00a0of the scythe, — the true pioneer’s Joy in getting the best <\/em>of nature. With such a spirit we feel sure wonders can be accomplished.<\/p>\n
\nJuly 12, 1929.<\/p>\n
\nDo you remember that the very last problem you took up with me before you left\u00a0<\/em>here in May was the straightening of the creek in front of the office, and you were so\u00a0<\/em>anxious to have it done that you asked me to send to the State University for a farm\u00a0<\/em>engineer to come and counsel us. And I promised you that I would do whatever he\u00a0<\/em>said.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n[unsigned copy]
\n[probably Katherine Pettit]<\/em><\/p>\n
\nCONTENTS\u00a0– Land Use Plan for Pine Mountain, c. 1913<\/h3>\n
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nGALLERY: Land Use Plan\u00a0for Pine Mountain, c. 1913<\/h3>\n\n\t\t