Mechanics Institute Cookery Class composition notebooks

Henry Lomb, President of the Board of Directors and one of the founders of the Institute, and other directors wanted to expand the Institute's focus upon the merging of Rochester Athenaeum and the Mechanics Institute to become Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute (RAMI). They had the resources to do as such as RAMI. Henry Lomb proposed that a Domestic Science Department that offered cooking, sewing, and domestic work had a place at the Institute. He formed a committee of women, including Mrs. Betsy Andrews, to assess the feasibility of adding cooking instruction to RAMI's offerings.

The committee invited a renowned cook, Mrs. Emma P. Ewing, to host a series of lectures for the Institute. After this went well, they held "a free lecture at Central Presbyterian Church entitled 'Our Kitchen Interests' to attract attention to the [Institute's] new program" (Gordon, p. 57). To help fundraise money for building repairs at RAMI to start a cooking school, another series of cooking classes was held at the Rochester Chamber of Commerce. Each individual class cost $0.50 and the series of eight lessons for $2.00, netting $452 overall (p. 57). The proceeds helped the cooking committee renovate the Gilman Perkins home on Washington steet to become the location of RAMI's Domestic Science Department, which hosted its first class in March 1893 (p. 57). Miss Grace W. Braggins became the first teacher in 1893 and RAMI appointed a director of the Domestic Science Department, Miss Mary Bliss, in 1897 (p. 57). Between 1893-1899, "attendance in the Domestic Science Department grew almost four times, from 367 to 1319 [pupils]; instructors, from three to twenty-one (p. 57).

Another initiative started by Lomb was creating cooking classes in various public high schools in Rochester, at ten cents for each lesson. The classes were taught by instructors from the Domestic Science Department. Lomb hoped that these lessons in secondary education institutions would inspire New York's "Board of Education [to] make cooking and sewing part of the school curriculum"(p. 58). While this was a contested issue, a majority of parents welcomed the introduction of domestic science into their children's curriculum.

While Domestic Science Department courses offered subjects such as cooking, dressmaking, and home science, they also offered two-year programs called "the normal course". The normal course included programs in chemistry, physics, physiology, and hygeine, which served as the beginning of the College of Science.

Gordon, Dane. Rochester Institute of Technology: Industrial Development and Educational Innovation in an American City, 1829-2006. Rochester, NY: RIT Press (2007).