The Recitation Hall at Mount Hermon School was built in 1884, funded by royalties from “Moody & Sankey Gospel Hymns.” It contained recitation rooms used to teach all of the school’s subjects except for science, a reading room, and the school’s main library. In the upper floor was an assembly hall, used for daily and Sunday religious services as well as large-scale lectures. In 1886, the “Student Volunteer Movement,” in which 100 young Mount Hermon men signed up to serve as missionaries, was initiated in this building.

The Silliman Science Hall (also called Silliman Laboratory) was built in 1892, the gift of Horace B. Silliman of Cohoes, NY. Dwight L. Moody, the founder of Mount Herman, wished to provide the best technology possible for its students and outfitted this hall with labs for physics, chemistry, biology, agriculture, recitation rooms, and a lecture hall that seated 234. Its iron-free 102′ x 52′ structure also housed a museum, large mechanical drawing room and a science library.

Being four miles from town, Mount Herman may have had to depend on well water. It may have been drawn using wind power, as evidenced by the tall windmill in the foreground.