Purchasing a farm for CII was a priority for both Booker T. Washington and Charles L. Marshall. In 1898, the Friends' Freedman's Association of Philadelphia bought two tracts of farmland near Christiansburg, totalling 85 acres. On one tract stood a former slaveholder's "mansion" house, along with several former slave cabins.

Above: The mansion house on Christiansburg Industrial Institute's original farm property, post-1898. Former slave cabins are visible to the left, Christiansburg Institute Collection.

Up from slavery was a theme of Booker T. Washington's, and it resonated with CII's transformation of this old plantation landscape. Students and other workers set out rehabilitating the house and cabins, putting these remnants of slavery to new use in the dawning twentieth century. Male boarding students slept in the cabins, while teachers held classes in the mansion house. Principal Charles L. Marshall described the symbolic transformation in his 1905 account of the school's history:

"Owning this farm, we had the "Big House" where the master once lived, and several of the slave cabins, which still remain, where the slaves resided. Hundreds of slaves, I have been told, tilled this soil in the days long ago, when its productive power was greater than that of any estate in this whole section. It is a remarkable and significant fact that where the master once lived is a recitation building for colored boys and girls, and where the slaves once huddled around the flickering light of a pine-knot young Negro students are quartered daily, preparing for the duties of tomorrow." Charles L. Marshall, "Evolution of a Shoemaker," in Tuskegee and Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements, edited by Booker T. Washington (1905; reprint 1906).

Renovations completed over the years by students, faculty, and locally hired workers allowed the mansion to continue to serve as a classroom building until at least the 1920s. The cabins were removed some time after 1905.

Above: The mansion house following renovations by Christiansburg Industrial Institute. People on porch unidentified, Christiansburg Institute Collection.

Geogian brick buildings replaced the mansion house and former slave cabins as academic buildings and dormitories. The boy's dormitory was completed in 1902. Baily Morris Hall, with its dormitory, chapel, dining hall, and library, hosted a Thanksgiving feast in 1911, and was dedicated the following year. The Edgar A. Long Building was dedicated in 1927. Through the industrial training program, CI students continued to participate in campus-building construction throught the Booker T. Washingtone Era. Together these buildings honored the men who had helped nurture and guide the school's transformation: Elliston Morris, the Friend and board member who successfully solicited Booker T. Washington's involvement, and Edgar A. Long, the beloved and influential principal.

Above: Baily Morris Hall, constructed in 1911, as it appeared in 1934. It looks down over the field where the manion house stood. Virginia Tech Special Collections, Historical Photographs Collection.

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