Update on the Welcome to Menomonie mural by Dale Manor.
After checking in with the City of Menomonie, we have received the OK to paint the "Welcome to Menomonie" mural at 620 Main St. E.
We are working on the schedule of when we can actually start painting the mural. We will be posting the start date as soon as we can figure out all the logistics.
Over the next few weeks, we'd like to share some information on each of the vintage images we have included in the mural design. The folks at the Rassbach Museum were good enough to research each image for us....Thanks Melissa
We'll start this off with the letter M - The Stout Tower
M --- THE IDEAL SCHOOLS OF MENOMONIE
The March 1904 issue of World’s Work magazine featured an article titled “The Ideal Schools of Menomonie.” Author Adele Marie Shaw wrote that “Menomonie, Wisconsin, is a little city of but 5,600 people, and yet it is the best living proof of what the public-school system to the United States can be made to do under proper conditions. It contains within a few hundred acres the most varied; the most complete object lesson in public education that exists anywhere today.”
“Two buildings that dominate an open space of several blocks are now the centre of the public-school life of the town,” she continued. “… The work carried on in the two buildings is not separate, but thoroughly interwoven. One building houses the Central common school, from the kindergarten through the high School and is the headquarters of the Teachers' Training School for kindergarten and Primary Teachers. The other, the manual-training building, is used by every Menomonie child — those from the outlying schools as well as those from the Central. A school is held in the building for the training of manual-training teachers, who have always at hand a "school of observation and practice."
The article described in great detail the collaboration, beginning in 1891, between lumber baron and benefactor James Huff Stout and the board of education (which he chaired) to introduce manual training and domestic science across the entire school curriculum. Stout would fund this effort from his personal fortune, building and furnishing a building, and paying the salaries of teachers. The reputation of the programs created a demand for teachers and set the Stout Institute on a course that would lead to it becoming what today is Wisconsin’s Polytechnic University.
Dale Manor, a Menomonie Native, owns Studio in the Sky in Minneapolis. Check out his artwork on the Studio in the Sky website and on Dale's Facebook page.
