"Our campaigns for gifts this summer have been almost without success and so I am afraid it is not going to be safe to embark on a very large program right away. I have recommended to my colleagues that we take $2200 out of our general income to apply towards the building. I thought that this would guarantee at least a beginning. Then I have recommended in addition that one-half of the gifts received during the summer that are not specifically allocated, should be applied to the building program. These gifts to date amount to $1400, so that the share for the building program is $700, making $2900 available to date. We certainly shall obtain somewhat more but how much is hard to say. I feel that if we set aside $2000 to begin with (to be used as follows: $1000 for tractor, sawmill and miscellaneous small tools; $1000 for wages up to Christmas of builder, his helper and our farmer who will use his team to drag the logs down to the sawmill) that it would be reasonably safe to count on an additional $4000 for building materials. We already have $900 of it, leaving $3100 still to procure. Of course this still leaves us with the necessity of raising money to divide the building up into rooms, install plumbing, electricity and heating. I think we can undertake to raise this money later on, but I would hate to proceed without feeling that there was little doubt we could complete the shell without undue delay. That is why I stated in my wire I thought we should limit ourselves to $4000 for materials for the outer shell of the first construction unit. I hope that the plans you make will be such that we can start out with them in this way."

North Carolina State Archives, Black Mountain College Papers. Theodore Dreier to A. Lawrence Kocher,  2 August 1940.