High School Buildings, Vol. 2

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ...walls absorbs the sound waves and overcomes the echo. There is now made especially for corrective purposes a heavy felt with which the plaster walls of a room are covered and formed into panels, as the size of the sheets of felt seem to make necessary. This felt in turn, is covered with a canvas and is then painted to match the decorations of the room. Such a simple expedient has been found to correct and make almost perfect the acoustic properties of some of the most important auditoriums in the country. In the writer's experience, when a large auditorium was being designed and its importance seemed to warrant it, an expert on acoustics has been called in for consultation and advice, and the small expense thus involved has been more than repaid by the satisfactory results accomplished. The ventilation of an auditorium is a subject which cannot receive too much attention when a building is designed. The good reputation of the school and those responsible for it, depends upon the comfort of the people comprising the large audiences which fill our school auditoriums many times during the year. These people are the taxpayers of the community and the real owners of the building, and as the auditorium is practicably the only room they use to any great extent, they do not hesitate to express their disapproval if everything is not as it should be. Generally speaking, the most modem ventilating system distributes fresh air very thoroly thruout the area of a room, and does not depend on driving the air thru registers on the sides or rear of the room with sufficient velocity to carry it across one-half the room, and thus produce unpleasant draughts. Fresh air is now admitted thru a number of registers distributed in the area of the ceiling and...