The Little Red Cabin

The little red cabin was a structure on the back (southwest) side of the early campus that came to be used resourcefully, rather than demolished, for domestic science (home economics) instruction. Perhaps the administration meant to shame the state legislature by suggesting that such shabby facilities would populate a state campus for teacher training if adequate funding were not provided. Shabby or not, some students found the cabin to be a quaint, lovable structure, one conveying a profoundly different aesthetic than the grand architecture fronting Fifth Street and defining, in the minds of most, the campus proper.

The first issue of the Training School Quarterly gave the structure its picturesque name, “little red cabin,” in a page-long essay devoted to it. That coverage included a line drawing of the rustic, wooded structure, its first known depiction. The Quarterly explained that the cabin was “a two room building” nestled “in the wood below the Training School.” The rooms were fashioned into “a model dining room and kitchen.” The Quarterly added that “the neat little Cabin, with its equipment stands for the Training School’s determination and ability to take that which it finds, make the best of it, and obtain the best results.”

President Wright reportedly made the executive decision that the “small cabin already on the place” be renovated, equipped, and in the school’s third year, “converted into the Domestic Science Department of East Carolina Teachers Training School.” Seniors in cooking classes were expected, as the capstone of their course work, to prepare a series of luncheons there. The challenge was to prepare a meal for six, with a menu that did not exceed $1.25 total. An attractive kitchen in the new Science Department soon came to serve as the site of cooking instruction, but the cabin reportedly remained in use as a home economic practice house for another decade.

The picture here is dated 1925. An earlier picture of the cabin appeared in the 1923 yearbook, the Tecoan, as one of the campus snapshots. In the 1925 Tecoan, the picture here was featured as one of the scenes dear to the students of that time, and then again popped up as the background for the portrait of the Home Economics Club. References to the cabin typically appear in accounts of East Carolina’s history as a humble but charming expression of the otherwise grand, handsome campus.

Sources

• “Campus Snapshots.” Tecoan. Greenville: East Carolina Teachers College, 1923. P. 100.
• “The Cabin.” Tecoan. Greenville: East Carolina Teachers College, 1925. Pp. 19, 199.
• “The Little Red Cabin.” Training School Quarterly. Vol. 1, no. 1. April, May, June, 1914. P. 48.
• “The Little Red Cabin.” University Archives # 55.01.0568. J. Y. Joyner Library. East Carolina University. Greenville, N.C. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/22947.

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