The Traditional Trades, pt. 2

"A good life, built by hand."

Dear Boss,

It has been a while since the last update, but the delay is more accountable to industry than it is to forgetfulness.  Many things have taken place since I last wrote.  To start, I have taken on an intern for the spring semester.  The intern, a Hillsdale College senior, will take on historic research and engage with area officials.  The information that he puts together will help me to better align future development with the contours of Hillsdale and more capably engage with local government.  I’m certain that his research will be of interest to you as well.

Second, I’ve been off to Boston with my Business Manager, Colm, to visit the North Bennet Street School (NBSS).  NBSS is another traditional trades school that offers courses in preservation carpentry, violin making, piano fixing and tuning, bookbinding, and more.  They have a beautiful campus in Boston’s North End, near the house of Paul Revere and the Old North Church.  If there is any neighborhood in America that deserves to have a school dedicated to preserving fine traditional craftsmanship, the North End is it.

NBSS hosts one of the few remaining full-time instrument making programs.

NBSS was originally founded in 1879 as a settlement house in the North End.  Settlement houses were established to welcome immigrants to the New World, provide them with vocational training, and ease their assimilation into American culture.  NBSS utilized the “sloyd” method of instruction, which teaches students various handicrafts over the course of their general education.  This manual training was more than mere vocational education, it also enhances the character of the student and provides an understanding of local cultural and aesthetic values.  At NBSS, the sloyd method aimed to "arouse a desire and pleasure in work; to accustom students to independence; to instill virtues of exactness, order and accuracy: and to train the attention”.  Such education is still compulsory in Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, but it is unfortunately scarce in the United States as shop classes have been left behind in American schools. Perhaps there is room for a sloyd after-school program in downtown Hillsdale?

Colm and I were warmly welcomed by NBSS’s President, Sarah Turner.  President Turner gave us a tour of the NBSS campus and was quite generous with her thoughts and encouragement.  My thoughts regarding the feasibility of such a school in Hillsdale were only bolstered by our visit.  Not only is there great demand for graduates of such programs, there is also a strong desire in many young people to study these durable trades over and above ephemeral skills.

These school visits have been fun and fascinating, but the work of actually building the school needs to start in the new year.  We are about to close on a ~70,000 square foot building which is located on the edge of downtown Hillsdale.  This building formerly operated as a flour mill but it was closed down in the 90s.  Today, it sits at the edge of downtown and casts a gloomy pall over the city.  Restoring this building and placing a traditional trade school in it will be the core of Hillsdale’s renaissance narrative.  What once was a thriving industrial hub was abandoned and can now be repurposed.  This repurposing will allow us to produce graduates capable of world-class work in the traditional trades and serve as another draw for visitors to the town.  The students can help to restore downtown buildings via their studies.  Once the school is built, Hillsdale will be the home of world-class intellectual and vocational education, both in the classical mode.

I have managed thus far to source one board member, a nationally-renowned classical architect, but I will need to find more.  Once we have a team of five to nine capable board members, we can form the non-profit and begin sourcing talent and fundraising. There is much work to be done before such a school could open, but it is certainly work worth doing.