![\"P1050524\"](\"http:\/\/staging.pinemountainsettlement.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/P1050524.jpg\")
<\/a>Country Cottage (Practice House, Model Home) Facade. 2014. [P1050524.jpg]<\/p><\/div>\n
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TAGS: <\/strong>Country Cottage (Practice House, Model Home), Katherine Pettit, staff residences, intern residences, donations, New York Auxiliary of the Southern Industrial Educational Association (SIEA), Evelyn Wells, teachers, domestic arts, hands-on practice, recipes<\/p>\n ID:<\/strong> Valuation in 1926 – $1,557.34<\/strong><\/p>\n Country Cottage, also called Practice House and first referred to as “Model Home,” was important to the educational plan that Katherine Pettit<\/a><\/strong> had for the School. Evelyn Wells<\/strong><\/a> in her early history<\/a> of the School describes its beginnings in 1922.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Country Cottage (Practice House, Model Home). Facade from below. [II_7_practice_house_310.jpg]<\/p><\/div>\n “The “model home” was started this week (later “Country Cottage”). It’s a tiny plank cottage, to be papered with newspapers, etc., and furnished as simply as a mountain\u00a0home, where\u00a0the domestic science teacher will live with a couple of girls\u00a0and keep pigs,\u00a0chickens, and a cow.<\/em>\u00a0Garden too, of course. money\u00a0($1000.) given by the Southern Industrial Education Association in New York.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The home described by Evelyn Wells was not the home that Kathryn Pettit first envisioned in March of 1919 when she wrote to a prospective worker,\u00a0 Miss Irwin, regarding her plans to build a “Model Home”.\u00a0 Pettit intended the model home as a working model young girls would live for a brief time to inspire them, and ultimately the community, to improve their physical environment, their practical housekeeping skills and their home hygiene. Pettit says in her letter to Miss Irwin<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n *March 6, 1919. KP to Miss Ethel Irwin, Quincy, Illinois.<\/strong> [no image]\u00a0 Discussion of needs at the Medical Settlement and the expected vacation of Marguerite Butler. KP asks if Miss Irwin can fill in, but discourages her interest in the “Practice House”. Instead, KP describes the need at the Big Laurel Medical Settlement that is just beginning. Pettit says<\/p>\n Our “Model Home” is to be built on the School Grounds, in the fall, probably, and I think it would be more interesting to you to do your work a little farther away from the Settlement, and I also think it would be a wiser plan for enlarging our circle of influence. The “Model Home” will be so much like what you want to do that we should be doubling here. It is to be a two-room frame house, put up mountain fashion, and furnished with the bare necessities for wholesome and frugal living, and two girls at a time are going to take turns living in it,\u00a0 — keeping their own cow, hens and pig, running their own accounts, making their own garden, — all in strictly mountain fashion, with only the addition of what they have learned to be necessary. One worker will live with them. The idea is to take these girls who may up and marry any time, and give them experience in running their own houses, with the strictest regard for economy and hygiene.<\/p>\n I do hope that we may hear from you soon, and that you will be able to hold yourself open for work here. I feel sure that you will be most useful, and that there is work here which will demand all your ability and loyalty.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n UNREALIZED PLANS<\/span><\/p>\n Later, <\/span>Pettit laid out plans for similar homes that might be built out in the community. Two lots of lumber were measured out “according to the Country Cottage plan” (source not disclosed, but possibly <\/span>Ruth Huntington<\/strong>, former school principal at Hindman Settlement) and these were then to be sold to community families. The idea was only partially successful. The house and the terraced gardens were copied by only a few families in the area (families unknown).<\/span>The intention for the creation of the “model home” is described in the Pine Mountain <\/span>Notes<\/p>\n [It will be] a model home where girls may practise [sic] liv<\/span>ing under conditions they are likely to meet <\/span>in their own homes. Although the Pine <\/span>Mountain ideal has always been to house <\/span>the scholars in cottages, so that the atmos<\/span>phere may be home-like and not institu<\/span>tional, the girls’ training in housekeeping,<\/span>cooking, and laundry work, cannot be <\/span>adapted without many changes to the usual <\/span>country home. The Model Home will be a <\/span>two or three-room house, such as most <\/span>young couples build to begin their married <\/span>life, newspapered inside, furnished with <\/span>utter simplicity but with every detail <\/span>thought out so as to make life wholesome. T<\/span>he girls will have their own garden, cow, <\/span>pig and chickens to care for, and will be <\/span>taught how to dispose of waste matter so <\/span>as to avoid soil pollution. Two or three girls <\/span>With a teacher in charge Will live in the <\/span>house several months at a time, and their <\/span>work will be almost a graduate Course in <\/span>housekeeping. We want the Model Home to <\/span>be the clearest possible exposition, of a home <\/span>founded on sincerity and joy, not striving <\/span>to imitate a house appropriate to the county <\/span>seat but content With its own beauties and <\/span>conveniences, like an old-fashioned moun<\/span>tain home, where dignity, good breeding,<\/span>simplicity …<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The country cottage model home at Pine Mountain Settlement School that one sees today was begun in 1922 and completed in 1923. It was then remodeled in 1927. In 1931 and again in 1952. In the years following its construction it was heavily used by girls to learn about the arts of domestic science, but its “charm” slowly melted away.<\/span><\/p>\n It is remarkable how this “romantic” notion of the country cottage has again taken hold across the country and any visit of Instagram on the Web and a search for <\/span>“Country Cottage” yields a tsunami of beautiful “cottages” .<\/a> Further the description of a “Country Cottage,” style notes that it<\/span><\/p>\n “… has a colorful, comfortable look characterized by painted or decorated furniture with graceful lines, weathered finishes, textural elements such as baskets, beadboard walls and natural-fiber rugs, and colors taken straight from a lush flower garden.”\u00a0<\/p>\n See: Cottage Style 101 – HGTV<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Following the marriage in June of 1940, of the School farmer, William Hayes<\/a><\/strong>, to the School secretary, Fern [Hall] Hayes<\/strong><\/a>,<\/strong> the house became their residence.\u00a0 In 1952 there was an addition to the west side of the lower-level. A second bathroom and a new bedroom were added. In the 1970s(?) the roof at the rear of the building was raised to grow the second-story space and to construct a full staff apartment on the upper floor. An outside stair to the upper-level apartment was also added at that time. Today the building continues to be a staff residence and serves as a dwelling for the various interns who cycle through the School but is now one of the most seriously degraded structures at the School\u00a0 — desperately in need of attention.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The funding for the original construction was donated to the School by the New York Auxiliary of the Southern Industrial Educational Association (SIEA)<\/a>. It was a tribute and testimony to their president, Mrs. Algernon S. Sullivan<\/strong>, who had gained a national reputation for her work in the Southern Appalachians. <\/span>Evelyn Wells, a staff member at Pine Mountain, in her gathered letters and history of the School, describes the house in this manner:<\/span><\/p>\n Our Country Cottage aimed to show them <\/em>[the girls at Pine Mountain] what was good about their own methods and to introduce to them others that they badly needed to learn. Some ideas with which we started had to be abandoned, such as well with water running by gravity to the kitchen sink because we could not strike water …<\/em><\/p>\n This creative planning is what the SIEA aimed to foster but often the lack of knowledge of local communities, and the physical site of the home, prevented full implementation of ideas. The industrial workers brought to the School to work in the “Model Home” had varying success in adapting their own training in the domestic sciences to the local needs. While the new Domestic Sciences was accelerating across the country, it was slow to be adopted by the students from the local community. While there was no direct opposition to learning new methods of housekeeping, there is evidence of a certain antipathy toward a course in “housekeeping.” Girls from the Community often knew more about the basic care of cows, chickens and gardening, than did the Domestic Science teachers who were hired to train them. Work with hygiene, food preparation, budgets, and dietary needs was more successful. Yet anecdotal evidence tells a different story. For example, a review of the recipes provides ample evidence that there was a failure to grasp the nuances of rural poverty in that area at the time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Cornelia Walker<\/strong>, a Cornell graduate, was the first Domestic Science teacher in 1922-1923 and was the first hostess of the home. There followed Mrs. Dora Sidelinger<\/strong><\/a>, Mary Work<\/strong>, Annette Van Bezey<\/strong>, and in 1926, Marguerite Emerson<\/strong>. During Mrs. Emerson’s regime (as Evelyn Wells described it) the name of the Home was changed from the Model Home to the Country Cottage. In 1931-1932, Anna Wulf [Pishzak]<\/a><\/strong> was recruited to teach Domestic Science within the industrial training curriculum at the School. By that time the building’s name was changed to Practice House. The new Girl’s Industrial Building<\/a> had just been built and there was a growing emphasis placed on Domestic Science and Homemaking in the curriculum.\u00a0<\/p>\n Evelyn Wells continues in her History:<\/p>\n No attempt is here made to estimate what this building has meant to the groups of girls who, three at a time, have spent six weeks in the Country Cottage, cooking, living on a carefully worked out budget, caring for the cow and selling its milk, and entertaining, under the guidance of the housemother. The garden was also important, and a summer worker has usually (and with varying degrees of success) canned its produce for the family’s winter consumption.<\/em><\/p>\n
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Record Type:<\/strong> \u00a0Built Work
Practice House Homemaker arts residential house for girls
Titles:<\/strong>\u00a0 Country Cottage
Practice House
Model Home
Construction Date<\/strong>: \u00a0 1922-1923
Catalog Level:<\/strong> Item
Work type:<\/strong> \u00a0residential structure
Classification:<\/strong> architecture
Creator:<\/strong> \u00a0Hook, Mary Rockwell, died 198xx. Architect
Location current:<\/strong>\u00a0Pine Mountain Settlement School, Harlan County, KY.\u00a0USA
Display Materials:<\/strong> \u00a0Wood and igneous rock [ (Materials Facet, Materials (hierarchy name), materials (matter), <materials by composition>,
Dimensions:<\/strong> unavailable
Rooms:<\/strong> \u00a09
Construction cost:<\/strong>\u00a0unknown
Events:<\/strong> \u00a0Remodeled 1927 ; 1951; 1952; 1960’s [?]
Style\/Period\/Group\/Movement:<\/strong> Rustic
General subject:<\/strong> \u00a0Architecture
Subjects: <\/strong>Settlement Schools, model homes, homemaking, Pine Mountain Settlement School, Pine Mountain, KY, Harlan County, KY, Katherine Pettit, community, lumber, terraced gardens, remodeling, staff residences, intern residences, gifts, donations, New York Auxiliary of the Southern Industrial Educational Association, Mrs. Algernon S. Sullivan, Southern Appalachians, Evelyn Wells, Cornelia Walker, Cornell University, Domestic Science, teachers, hostesses, Mrs. Seidlinger, Mary Work,\u00a0 Annette Van Bezey, Marguerite Emerson, cows, budgets, cooking, entertaining, housemothers, gardens, canning, guidelines, home maintenance, instructions, Home Economics, Miss Smith, hands-on practice, desserts, meals, recipe, porches<\/p>\n
\nCOUNTRY COTTAGE: History<\/h3>\n
PURPOSE AND REMODEL HISTORY<\/h3>\n
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LATER YEARS<\/h3>\n
ORIGINAL FUNDING<\/h3>\n
DOMESTIC SCIENCE AND HOME ECONOMICS TEACHERS<\/h3>\n