New College Community
canton, NORTH CAROLINA
The picture above of five New College students at the North Carolina Community are working an apple press.What strikes me as unique about this photograph is how incredibly young these college students appeared to be. Taken from the comforts of the big city, the students look less than enthusiastic.
The New College Community in North Carolina was the hidden jewel of the total student experience, because the importance placed on communal planning and living as part of the educative process for students had been an essential part of the New College curriculum plan from the beginning. Now here was a program in place where a balance between theory and practice could be achieved resulting into a state of informed action, or praxis as theorized years later by Paolo Freire (1970). Alexander knew that teachers had to be prepared to participate actively in the communities in which they would work and assume educational leadership so the idea of a New College Camp, a microcosm of society where the Persistent Problems of Living, in the most basic sense, were presented to a group of students in a rural isolated setting who then had to work together and in turn learn from each other.
The initial purpose of the plan was to have all accepted students enroll with the understanding that they would spend three months, June to August, at the Camp so that their suitability to continue at New College could be determined. In many cases the new students were well out of their comfort zone, the majority being from the city. Activities in agriculture, ecology, history and customs of the area, and participation of the culture of the people of the area served to give the New College staff a new lens to judge the capabilities of future teachers. Though this was not possible for the first group of 1932 enrollees, the camp idea was kept to the forefront of planning.
Early in the fall of 1932, William G. Camp and Philip Powers investigated the possibility of a weekend camp at the New Jersey’s Palisades Interstate Park area on the Hudson River while Goddard Du Bois took groups to Camp Columbia, a 600 acre rural property owned by the University in northwestern Connecticut. The idea of having two camps, one for weekend trips for the purpose of recreation, meditation, quiet study, and physical education and the other a more permanent place for longer periods of intensive study was also bandied about.
The spring of 1933 found Alexander and Dean Russell together on a trip when they began to plan along the lines of setting up such a learning community. Their labors in planning the community were aided by two students, John Locke and William Taylor, who conceived of a bold plan while spending a March weekend at Camp Columbia. They presented Alexander with the idea to have a community also address the financial difficulties of attending New College in the height of the Great Depression. The student plan included a farm on which the “Resident Group” of students would live and work for an extended period of time in exchange for their education on a work/study basis. Students, the “Summer Group”, would spend the summer, prior to their start at New College in the Community for a period of student induction into communal living and as preparation in community development. Of course they would do so at regular tuition rates. The plan was well developed, complete in its outline, inventive and purposeful, and embraced New College principles. Alexander wholeheartedly approved the plan and submitted the reworked version to the Trustees of Teachers College. The Trustees liked the idea in theory, but would not endorse a year round farm project largely for the reason that school and college farms had almost always posed a financial liability, and that farms in general in the precarious economy of 1933 were a liability. Whether or not Alexander knew fully of the Trustees wishes on the matter, he pressed on with the idea of a year round camp presence as called for in Locke and Taylor’s plan.
The initial purpose of the plan was to have all accepted students enroll with the understanding that they would spend three months, June to August, at the Camp so that their suitability to continue at New College could be determined. In many cases the new students were well out of their comfort zone, the majority being from the city. Activities in agriculture, ecology, history and customs of the area, and participation of the culture of the people of the area served to give the New College staff a new lens to judge the capabilities of future teachers. Though this was not possible for the first group of 1932 enrollees, the camp idea was kept to the forefront of planning.
Early in the fall of 1932, William G. Camp and Philip Powers investigated the possibility of a weekend camp at the New Jersey’s Palisades Interstate Park area on the Hudson River while Goddard Du Bois took groups to Camp Columbia, a 600 acre rural property owned by the University in northwestern Connecticut. The idea of having two camps, one for weekend trips for the purpose of recreation, meditation, quiet study, and physical education and the other a more permanent place for longer periods of intensive study was also bandied about.
The spring of 1933 found Alexander and Dean Russell together on a trip when they began to plan along the lines of setting up such a learning community. Their labors in planning the community were aided by two students, John Locke and William Taylor, who conceived of a bold plan while spending a March weekend at Camp Columbia. They presented Alexander with the idea to have a community also address the financial difficulties of attending New College in the height of the Great Depression. The student plan included a farm on which the “Resident Group” of students would live and work for an extended period of time in exchange for their education on a work/study basis. Students, the “Summer Group”, would spend the summer, prior to their start at New College in the Community for a period of student induction into communal living and as preparation in community development. Of course they would do so at regular tuition rates. The plan was well developed, complete in its outline, inventive and purposeful, and embraced New College principles. Alexander wholeheartedly approved the plan and submitted the reworked version to the Trustees of Teachers College. The Trustees liked the idea in theory, but would not endorse a year round farm project largely for the reason that school and college farms had almost always posed a financial liability, and that farms in general in the precarious economy of 1933 were a liability. Whether or not Alexander knew fully of the Trustees wishes on the matter, he pressed on with the idea of a year round camp presence as called for in Locke and Taylor’s plan.
First New College Community Group, 1933
In early April a location was selected in Haywood County, North Carolina. The place chosen, deep in the Appalachian Mountains in the western part of the state, was a farm of 1,800 acres near the town of Canton, about thirty-five miles southwest of Asheville. The area was owned by the Gwynn family, represented by T. Lenoire Gwynn of Waynesville. The farm was in the Pigeon River Valley on the edge of the Great Smokey Mountain National Forest. Paved roads from Canton and Waynesville came to within 6 miles of the Community. The final stretch was a narrow gravel road along the Pigeon River. The site was determined by an old friend of Alexander’s from his work with the Raleigh School District before his time at Columbia. Back then he had been working through North Carolina State Agricultural College in Raleigh with Dr. Bert W. Wells, who suggested the Canton site as biologically, geologically, and sociologically ideal for the purposes of New College.
The original New College Community had the use of three farm houses, one which was fairly modern, an older farm house, and a summer house a mile and a half up the valley from the other two. The “New House”, as it was called, had eight rooms and two baths with a large porch and a small screened back porch. One bath and three large bedrooms were upstairs, and the other bath was downstairs with two more bedrooms, a living room, dining room, and a kitchen. The older farm house referred to as the “Old House”, had three large rooms downstairs in addition to a dining room and kitchen. There was also a large porch that ran almost completely around the house. Two of the downstairs rooms were used for sleeping quarters and the third was a music and social room. Upstairs were two baths and four large bedrooms plus a very wide hall which would be used for several cots. The summer house was called “Lowe Cottage” and had six fair sized rooms, a screened in kitchen and two attic rooms. It had running water, an outhouse, and a shower house. An additional small shower house was constructed between the Old and New Houses. The property also came with a spring house with running water near the main houses, an old house which was prepared as a science laboratory, an old chicken house that students converted into an art studio, and a large barn near the main houses.
The first group of seven young men came to the community around April 20, 1933, with Mr. F. Oral Grounds. On May 23rd, a month later one more young man and six young women came to North Carolina to make up the Resident Group. That first group, other than Mr. Grounds, knew almost nothing of rural life other than the camping trips to Camp Columbia, but it was up to them to make the community habitable for the groups that were to follow.
The original New College Community had the use of three farm houses, one which was fairly modern, an older farm house, and a summer house a mile and a half up the valley from the other two. The “New House”, as it was called, had eight rooms and two baths with a large porch and a small screened back porch. One bath and three large bedrooms were upstairs, and the other bath was downstairs with two more bedrooms, a living room, dining room, and a kitchen. The older farm house referred to as the “Old House”, had three large rooms downstairs in addition to a dining room and kitchen. There was also a large porch that ran almost completely around the house. Two of the downstairs rooms were used for sleeping quarters and the third was a music and social room. Upstairs were two baths and four large bedrooms plus a very wide hall which would be used for several cots. The summer house was called “Lowe Cottage” and had six fair sized rooms, a screened in kitchen and two attic rooms. It had running water, an outhouse, and a shower house. An additional small shower house was constructed between the Old and New Houses. The property also came with a spring house with running water near the main houses, an old house which was prepared as a science laboratory, an old chicken house that students converted into an art studio, and a large barn near the main houses.
The first group of seven young men came to the community around April 20, 1933, with Mr. F. Oral Grounds. On May 23rd, a month later one more young man and six young women came to North Carolina to make up the Resident Group. That first group, other than Mr. Grounds, knew almost nothing of rural life other than the camping trips to Camp Columbia, but it was up to them to make the community habitable for the groups that were to follow.
1933 NC Community Planning Group.
These teenagers were truly fish out of water and yet by all accounts rose to the challenge admirably. They worked from sunup to sundown, digging ditches and laying new water pipes, cutting cords and cords of wood for their needs, preparing the soil and planting several acres of land with hand tools. They had to milk three cows, feed the hogs, and care for 24 laying hens and 400 baby chicks. I think of Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie in The Simple Life, and wish I could see that first cow milking lesson.
The 1933 student progress roster shows that students Harrison Cardiff, John Herbert Francis, John Locke, Lawrence Loomis, Everett McCarter, Henry Ravazzin, John Sudowski, William Taylor, and later Amilie Guenther, Elizabeth Marte, Faith McIntyre, Grace Moyer, Annette Newman, and Marian O’Conner made up the Resident Group that intended to stay through winter.
Of the first “Summer Group” twenty (five men and fifteen women) arrived on June 3rd and thirteen (four men and nine women) more on July 3rd. In addition to Mr. Grounds, the first New College Community faculty for that summer of 1933 included Ruth Bornmann, Goddard “Duke” DuBois, Max Exner, Mrs. Nira Grounds, Helen Hosmer (only a few weeks in June), Elizabeth Jones (July only), Katherine Noble, who was in charge of the camp, Philip Powers (June only), Dr. Agnes Snyder (June only), Professor Bert Wells from North Carolina, Katherine Wright, a high school teacher also from North Carolina to assist in the management of home economics, and Gertrude Wylie (from July 3rd on). The faculty/student body also included students Charles Cook (art), Bernard Werthman (music), and Victor Jacoby (dramatics).
The 1933 student progress roster shows that students Harrison Cardiff, John Herbert Francis, John Locke, Lawrence Loomis, Everett McCarter, Henry Ravazzin, John Sudowski, William Taylor, and later Amilie Guenther, Elizabeth Marte, Faith McIntyre, Grace Moyer, Annette Newman, and Marian O’Conner made up the Resident Group that intended to stay through winter.
Of the first “Summer Group” twenty (five men and fifteen women) arrived on June 3rd and thirteen (four men and nine women) more on July 3rd. In addition to Mr. Grounds, the first New College Community faculty for that summer of 1933 included Ruth Bornmann, Goddard “Duke” DuBois, Max Exner, Mrs. Nira Grounds, Helen Hosmer (only a few weeks in June), Elizabeth Jones (July only), Katherine Noble, who was in charge of the camp, Philip Powers (June only), Dr. Agnes Snyder (June only), Professor Bert Wells from North Carolina, Katherine Wright, a high school teacher also from North Carolina to assist in the management of home economics, and Gertrude Wylie (from July 3rd on). The faculty/student body also included students Charles Cook (art), Bernard Werthman (music), and Victor Jacoby (dramatics).
