Architectural Awareness Club focuses on 113 Front Street

Every year, a group of middle schoolers from Owego recreate historical parts of their community in the Architectural Awareness Program. This year, the group of 15 boys and girls in sixth through eighth grade is recreating the Parker Family Home at 113 Front St. in Owego. 

The Federal Greek Revival style house is easily recognized by its large white pillars and bright-yellow color, which the students recreated to be an exact match to scale. One foot is reduced to half an inch. The model is mounted to a board painted with fall scenery to make it look like it is on the real Front Street.

Each Architectural Awareness Program is a year’s worth of work. Technology education teacher Don Shultz is on his 24th year of leading the program along with art teacher Jolene Williams, which has students apply skills from all subjects into one creative project. 

“It’s an authentic interdisciplinary project where it applies everything,” Schultz said.

For example, he added, the students had to use Pythagorean theorem to get a measurement of the angle of the roof. Without the program, this theorem may have only been applied to their algebra homework and not real-life situations. 

“Its ambiguous what comes out of a project like this,” Shultz says. He can see that students are advancing in their physical skills such as minor construction, but he’s known many students from his club move on into technology fields with skills fostered in the program.

Some of the sixth graders involved haven’t even had a shop class at OA Middle School, and are getting to learn how to use the equipment early in order to construct their relief model. 

“It was hard,” Elizabeth Reigle said about getting to know the heavy equipment, adding, “But we have an amazing teacher.” 

Sixth grader Madison McEvoy said that some of them had no interest in architecture before joining the program, but have now grown to appreciate it through their work. 

Shultz is fortunate to have some state-of-the-art equipment in the tech shop at the school; one tool that the group has utilized extensively has been a laser cutter to get the exact rectangular-scalloped trim on the house. Throughout the project, Shultz is trying to think of different ways that pieces could be manufactured in order to expose the students to more than just a band saw, he said. 

Once the house is finished, the students will present their work to multiple audiences including the Owego Rotary, Owego Elks, Board of Education and the Newark Valley Coalition for better Schools. In the presentation they will discuss the building process, their decisions, the history of the house and its adaptive reuse. 

Part of the Architectural Program is coming up with an alternate use for the structure in the future. This year, on their own, the students propose that the building could be used as a soup kitchen to serve the community. 

“The students take accountability of it,” Shultz says, “you can see their pride in it.”

The students have fun with the project in working together to create their model. 

“Its fun to do something that’s not modern, but you get a modern feel to it,” Matthew Higgins said. 

The work on the model is almost complete as the students ready speeches for their many presentations next month. Their excitement to show their work calms their nerves, was the consensus of the group.