When the college first opened, math teacher R. E. Cobb and mechanical arts instructor Percy Ashley began to teach basic

construction techniques, including surveying, which allowed the students to lay out the initial campus plan and build its first structures. Within a few years, woodworking, blacksmithing, carpentry, masonry, and mechanical drawing were added to what was known as the manual training program. In 1900, the students and faculty of the Industrial Department built a boy’s dormitory known as Hill Hall in what was then considered the modern style. According to the Savannah Tribune (1902), this stunning masonry building on a raised white plinth, with its classical temple form and two-story Ionic facade, was “resplendent in its beauty and imposing in its proportions.”