Mather High School Graduates Build a Stone-Carving Classroom on Governors Island

The classroom's sign. NPS.

Four recent graduates of the Stephen T. Mather Building Arts and Craftsmanship High School built an off-site classroom at Governors Island National Monument, where current Mather students now learn stone carving.

Built by former students

• Who: Max McGinley, Adam Richardson, Imani Wood and Katherine Soloma, as one of several projects in their internships with the Student Conservation Association (SCA) and the American Conservation Experience (ACE).
• When: July to September 2022.
• What: a raw storage space turned into a classroom and workshop where current students can build skills and work on National Park Service projects.
• How: with what they had learned at Mather — framing walls, architectural finishes, and above all collaboration and teamwork.

A recent Mather graduate sands the walls they installed for the new classroom. NPS/LaRochelle.

Learning to carve

Once the room was finished in September 2022, Mather students began learning hands-on from Chris Pellettieri, a master mason working through the NPS's experienced service program (ESP). They learn the skills and techniques of shaping and carving stone, and come to appreciate the historic stonework of Governors Island and beyond.

Two Mather students at work on their stone-carving projects. NPS.

The next plan for the space: in the spring, students were to use it to reconstruct a log soldier hut for Morristown National Historical Park.

Mather students in the completed classroom. NPS.

Current students now learn in a room their former classmates and friends built for them — a place that will train the next generation of historic preservationists for years to come, and show them that with hard work anyone can build, or preserve, something beautiful.

Sources

Based on "Graduates From Mather High School Build A Legacy," National Parks of New York Harbor, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source spells the school's name "Craftmanship," the Student Conservation Association "Student Conversation Association," and the island "Governor's Island" in places; all are corrected here.