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From Here to There

By Emily Weinstein

The Hogwarts-esque lobby of Shepard Hall.

April 2003 - Shepard Hall is a neo-gothic building that smells deliciously of frequent cleanings and outmoded heating. But to the fifth- and sixth-graders in the thrall of the Harry Potter books, it is Hogwarts, the wizard-training school where Harry learns to fly. "It“s the statues and arches that remind me of Hogwarts,” says Talia Charlton. Usually, it is Salvadori Architect-Educator Dida Stadler who visits Darrell Hucks’s class at the Ella Baker School in Julia Richmond Educational Complex on the Upper East Side. But one morning the class returned the favor and spent a day exploring the City College campus, where the Salvadori Center is situated, accompanied by their art teacher, Alberto Wilmore.

Lara Torres shows her teacher, Darrell Hucks, her perspective drawing.

When I join the group, they are sprawled all over the lobby “looking for patterns” in the architecture and ornamentation and sketching the space. Lara Torres is drawing the lighting fixtures, which she says “look like spiderwebs,” trying to show how they appear smaller as they get further away.

“They look smaller just because they’re a distance away,” she observes. “Like when a person walks away. Look at those people walking towards us, they’re getting bigger, and my classmates,” she says, gesturing down the hall, “are small.”

I ask if she knows the word that sums up what she’s describing--perspective? “Oh,” she breezes. “I didn’t know that word but I can explain it anyway.”

The self-dubbed “Three Little Pigs” at work on their communal drawing.

Three inseparable pals, who introduce themselves as the Three Little Pigs (otherwise known as Nathaniel Andujar, Jeremy Lopez and Yonadel Jiminez) are working communally on a very detailed drawing of a single arch and the paneled wood door underneath it. How does this space make them feel?

“Like a rich man,” says Nathaniel.

“It’s the nice art,” adds Jeremy.

They consider a bronze statue of George Washington. Nathaniel likes it. Jeremy is dubious. “His sword is fake, and he’s wearing tights!”

Nikeimah Kaalund catches the light from the Great Hall’s stained glass windows in her hand.

Up in the Great Hall, the kids compare the light streaming in through the colored stained-glass windows to the dimmer ceiling lamps downstairs in the lobby. What does this gigantic space remind them of? “

“St. John’s Cathedral,” says Faith Harris.

“My aunt’s house in the Domincan Republic,” says Yonadel.

“It makes me feel free,” says Nikeimah Kaalund.

After sketching the lobby in pictures, they sketch the Great Hall in words. This activity is part of the “Space” lesson in the Foundation chapter of the Project Book. Like all Salvadori lessons, this one is interdisciplinary, combining art with language arts.

The kids break into groups to write paragraphs about how the space makes them feel. One group, sitting in the colored splotches of light cast by the stained-glass windows, wonders aloud, “What it would be like to sleep here every night for a year?”

Nikeimah Kaalund thinks “It wouldn’t be scary, you’d get used to it.”

Jennifer Murdock observes, “This room is so big and the floor is so slippery, you could play sock hockey and you could sketch everything.” The logistics of the Great Hall as sock-hockey arena are discussed at length.

City College Architect Angel Rodriguez explains how the building’s systems work.

The view from the roof.

After lunch, the class visits the mechanical room, which they deem “depressing,” and the roof, where the view is considerably better. City College architect Angel Rodriguez explains how the ventilation, heating and cooling systems work their way through the building from bottom to top. This is the animated version of a lesson the class did earlier in the year from our Project Book, called “Your Body, a Building,” in which they compared the systems in a building to those in the human body. When the students return to their classroom, they will write essays comparing and contrasting the lobby, Great Hall, mechanical room and roof, further analyzing the way space affects people, completing the “Space” lesson they began on their field trip.

As they head for the subway, the class emphatically invites me to come visit the Ella Baker School. I took them up on the invitation, and spent the afternoon in Alberto Wilmore’s classroom.

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