Some interesting facts about the stupidity and incompetence of the bosses of the local Board of School Trustees will likely be revealed when the public is finally permitted to see what the new High School Building on No. Road St. is going to cost them.
It has been known for some time that the cost of the building will greatly exceed the original estimate. This is due largely to the fact that the School Board insolently ignored every recommendation of school planning experts and employed a firm of architects who are specialists in apartment house and warehouse designing, but who don’t seem to know a think about planning a school building.
In fact, the architects and the school board didn’t even take into account the fact that they were locating the new quarter million (?) dollar High School in a marsh. The plans called for 50 to 75 pieces of piling 25 to 40 feet long on the South Line of the building. But when L.B. Perry, the contractor took the plans and laid the building out, it was found that a third of the structure was located on marsh land and more piling was necessary. They grove more piles and more plies. When the piling was finally completed, something like 2,000 piles had been driven. All of the piles laid end to end would make a string of logs eight miles long or just about the distance from Elizabeth City to Weeksville. In some places the land is so rotten that several piles had to be driven one on top of another to strike hardpan. Some of the piles went down 140 and odd feet before a foundation was obtained. And the architects who drew the plans for the building, or the Chairman of the School Board who approved the plans, neither of them had anticipated anything like that.
The driving of nearly 2,000 pieces of extra piling set the job back five or six weeks, according to the contractor, Mr. Perry. Incidentally it s admitted that the extra piling cost $6,000. This $6,000 would have gone a long way on the purchase of additional land on the North side of the school, which would have made it possible to put the school building on high land where piling foundations would not be needed.
Mr. Perry resents the suggestion that there has been any needless delay in the construction of the new school building. He says the extra piling set the job back as much as anything else. Other delays of a minor nature are such as contractors everywhere encounter. Mr. Perry points out that Norfolk’s new million dollar city market which was to have been completed May 1, 1923, hasn’t been completed yet. The first and second floors of the building will be completed by Oct. 1, says Mr. Perry. This will leave the basement, auditorium and gymnasium to be finished. Mr. Perry thinks the job will be completed by Nov. 1, 1923.
From the first page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, Sept. 14, 1923
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