page_title: Akron Plan
section_title: Uniform Lessons and Akron Plan
hierarchical_section_title: Akron Plan / Uniform Lessons and Akron Plan
caption_attribution_description: English: Original Akron plan: main floor
context_page_description: The Akron Plan was a scheme for the design of churches and other religious buildings that housed Sunday schools. It was characterized by a set of wedge-shaped classrooms that radiated from the direction of a central superintendent's platform. Doors or movable partitions could be closed to separate the classes, or opened to allow the entire body of pupils to participate in school-wide exercises.
  Until about 1860, Sunday-school pupils of all ages were taught together in a single large room. After that, there was an increasing tendency for pupils to be taught separately, with instruction tailored to their ages, for most of the session. However, the superintendent conducted all-school exercises at the beginning and end of the session. To facilitate this, the building's interior layout had to enable the students to be quickly and efficiently divided into classes or brought together in a single body.
  The Akron Plan was devised to address this need. It took its name from the city of Akron in the state of Ohio in the Great Lakes region of the United States, where it was developed for the construction of a church built in 1866–67.
context_section_description: Under the Uniform Lesson Plan, the grades were not to be kept separate for the entire duration of the session. Rather, the class was to begin with devotional exercises, led by the superintendent and involving the entire body of pupils. After this, the grades were to be taught separately. The session would end with the superintendent's leading, and the whole body's participating in, a five-minute review of the lesson followed by closing exercises.
  This created a challenge for ecclesiastical architects. The Sunday-school building had to be designed in such a way that the pupils could quickly and efficiently be separated according to their various grades, and brought together for whole-school activities. John H. Vincent, an authority on Sunday schools in the Methodist Episcopal Church and later a bishop, described the architectural requirements: "Provide for togetherness and separateness; have a room in which the whole school can be brought together in a moment for simultaneous exercises, and with a minimum of movement can be divided into classes for uninterrupted classwork".
  One of those who addressed the design problem was Lewis Miller. A wealthy inventor and industrialist, Miller supervised a Sunday school in Canton, Ohio, and later one in Akron. There, he employed the graded system and experienced the problems that arose from unsuitable building designs.
  When the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Akron decided to construct a new building, Miller interested himself in the building's design. Working with architects Walter Blythe of Cleveland and Jacob Snyder of Akron, he devised a plan in which wedge-shaped classrooms were separated by partitions radiating from the direction of a central superintendent's platform. Doors on the platform-facing side of each classroom could be closed during grade-separated lessons, or opened to allow all pupils to see and hear the superintendent during school-wide exercises. The new church, following these plans, was constructed in 1866–67.
  The so-called Akron Plan was adopted by Protestant churches throughout the United States and the world, particularly after 1872, when the Fifth National Sunday-School Convention adopted the Uniform Lesson Plan. A 1911 American publication stated that "This plan for the Sunday-school building has been almost universally adopted in this country", and a 1914 publication stated that of the churches built in the preceding fifty years, three-quarters of those that made provisions for Sunday schools had used some version of the Akron Plan. Many of these churches modified the design with the addition of a movable partition between the sanctuary and the Sunday-school spaces, allowing the Sunday-school classes and the main body of congregants to be separated or united.
caption: Original Akron Plan
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