From left, are Architectural Awareness Club members Camden Dyer-Decator, Gavin Twoey, Julianna Hessberger, Logan Abbey and Maria Pawlak.
Since its founding in 1995, the Owego Apalachin Middle School’s Architectural Awareness club has been churning out intricate models of historic buildings in Owego. This year celebrates the club’s 20th year of bringing education to life through interdisciplinary learning. The club uses many aspects of education from mathematics and technology, to art and social studies to complete the true-to-scale models.
The students begin by screening all of the building options, most without blueprints since historic Owego is full of buildings predating the 1800s. Students debate and converse with each other before voting to decide which building they will model. They then go to the location and measure and photograph every inch of the structure that will be necessary in scaling down to one half inch to each foot of the original measurement.
This year, students chose to replicate the Owego Elks Lodge. They began the build of the model in July of 2014 and have just recently completed it, as the many fine details were painstakingly perfected according to Don Shultz, the team’s advisor.
“We don’t send out anything substandard,” he remarked. Each tiny piece of the model was cut at least six times, and only the best one made it onto the final product. According to team member Gavin Twoey, “It was a lot of fun seeing who could cut each piece perfectly and we would compete to see who would cut the best one.”
The students were in agreement that the most difficult obstacle was getting the tiny pieces to perfect scale, with no blueprints to base it off of.
The Architectural Awareness club is rooted in tradition. Shultz, advisor to the club since its beginning, recounted the first model built by the club in 1995 and the tri-square that was accidentally sealed within the walls. It has become a yearly tradition now, to leave behind a tool under the roof. This year, the students left behind a glue gun. Julianna Hessberger stated there is also a tiny metal bench that has sat on the porches and in the yards of many of the structures they have produced, and it sits today on the side porch of the miniature Lodge.
This club has truly brought these students together. They learn much about group collaboration, sharing ideas, debating, and appreciating each other’s opinions, according to Maria Pawlak. Kennidy Dyer-Decator shared that the teamwork style really helped her learn to work more smoothly with her peers. Her own brother, Camden Dyer-Decator said his favorite part of the build was in the beginning, when the children went out to the Elks Lodge to measure and photograph it. Student Logan Abbey retold the tale of the intricately detailed ceiling that has since been sealed over, but the students were fortunate enough to have been shown pictures.
The model will be on display early this week at the River Row Bookshop on Front Street in Owego for the public to view. The students will be presenting the model to the local Rotary on April 7.
