1950
At the 1950 Pi Beta Phi National Convention, plans for a new Staff House were discussed to house the growing faculty and feed the larger student body who attended Summer Craft Workshops. An architect began sketches and drawings, with a plan to begin construction that fall.
In a “News from Little Pigeon” article, director Ruth Dyer reports,
“Facing the door of the Home Economics Room in the Pi Beta Phi Settlement School building, is a large map of the United States which is dotted with colored thumb tacks. Above it, a neatly lettered strip says, ‘Where We Live.’ The tacks mark the towns and cities represented by the faculty and students enrolled in the Summer Workshop in Crafts and Community Recreation… This past summer the 69 dots were scattered over twenty-five states, with New Mexico the farthest from the concentration of dots around Knoxville and Gatlinburg. For six weeks the people represented by these colored dots, teachers, students, Home Demonstration Agents, physiotherapists and home craft devotees, lived, worked, and played together; enjoying a unique educational experience.
WORK is the keynote of the whole experience but when it is done in pleasant surroundings, in the company of others who are vitally interested in the same things, it seems like play. Even with the workrooms being kept open three nights a week, there was a call for more time to WORK.”
