Cumberland Drive really marks the division between the pre-World War II campus, and the post-World War II campus. Fittingly, Memorial Auditorium was built to honor the Shippensburg students who lost their lives in World War One and World War II.If you can imagine, the original campus that you just walked through was completely surrounded by cow pastures until the 1940s. In the years following World War II, the campus has grown and flourished with new academic buildings, new residence halls, a new student union, a new library, a new lab school, a new dining hall, new athletic facilities, and even the Luhrs Performing Arts Center.And the campus keeps growing, changing, and adapting to meet the new needs of a changing world. From what began as a single building and 217 students has grown our modern Shippensburg University.In 2021, Shippensburg University will be celebrating its 150th anniversary. It is pretty amazing to think of how far we have come in those 150 years, but also to think that we are part of a that great tradition and history that has continued for nearly a century and a half.

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In the period after World War II,  the campus exploded both in terms of size and the number of students. This was largely in part due to college becoming more available to children from middle class and lower class families, the federal and state governments poured money into expanding their colleges and universities. Additionally,  there was a large influx of veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War who chose to attend college on the G.I. Bill. 



Memorial Auditorium 

The SU History and Philosophy Department brings our students the history of Shippensburg University. It is the story of an institution that has continuously changed and adapted over time while remaining true to its central mission. Our school had endured for almost 150 years. Today, we are part of that long tradition—an institution that has developed and grown, but always remained dedicated to the core purpose of teaching, learning, and serving the community.

It was known simply as the President's House until 1982, when the Board of Trustees officially named it the Martin House in honor of President Dr. Samuel Martin who oversaw its construction. President Martin was the first resident in the house along with his wife and two children - Emily and Drew. Every president has lived in the Martin House with the exception of President Dr. Jody Harpster. During his short two - year term as president, the house was undergoing renovations. Instead President Harpster lived in his house in town with his family.  Our current president, Laurie Carter, lives in the Martin House with her husband.

Originally, the principal of the school lived in a second-floor apartment in Old Main. However, by the early twentieth century, the school decided those quarters were no longer sufficient. 

The President's House was designed in the Colonial Revival style. The home cost around 6,000 dollars to build at that time.





The Martin House

When the lab school left, this building then became the home to the Business Department. Shippensburg State Teachers College developed a business education curriculum that was approved on December 3, 1937. It was originally focused on training teachers to teach business in public schools—but it also the roots of our modern Grove College of Business. In the 1970s, Gilbert Hall became the historical home of Shippensburg's Afro-American Student Organization, the group that is now Shippensburg’s Multicultural Student Association. Diane Jefferson became the president of the Organization during the ‘70s and has been the direct of the the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs since its creation in 1989.

Gilbert Hall was built as the second model school for the Cumberland Valley State Normal School in 1911. The building replaced the original Model School on the first floor of Old Main. Gilbert Hall housed the lab school until the early 1940s when a new lab school opened - the Rowland School.



Gilbert Hall

The Bridge connecting Hortona Hall to Old Main Alumni told stories about this bridge as the site of a lot of pranks and mischief, and many efforts to sneak across to visit with the other sex. Groups of male students who would serenade the women students, and “panty raids” occurred where male students who sneak over into Horton Hall and try to sneak off with female students’ undergarments.   Pranks were also pretty common in Old Main, including one time that a group of male students went onto a neighboring farm, and brought back a cow that they led to the fourth floor of Old Main. Apparently, cows have no trouble walking up stairs, but they have a very hard time walking down stairs. Somehow they got the cow out, we don't know exactly how, but we're sure it wasn't easy! The lobby of Horton Hall was known as the Court of Horton Hall where the female students who would meet with friends and family. Both female and male students who were dating could meet here with supervised environment. The first phone on campus was located here on campus, with the number being known by heart - 9443. Horton Hall now contains faculty offices, the Center for Juvenile Justice, and the Office of Professional, Community, and Distance Education among others.

Horton Hall was constructed in 1895 as a women’s dormitory. Teaching was seen at the time as a women’s profession, so it not surprising that there was need for more space for women than men. This was the women’s side of Old Main, so it makes sense that it would be linked to the Women’s Dorm.  Co-ed dorms underwent creation during the 1960s through the 1970s. 



Horton Hall

The trustees had hired architect Samuel Sloan of Philadelphia to design the building. Ground was broken for the school in August 1870. And then on May 31, 1871, the town celebrated by beginning construction of this building here in front of us. A parade, led by the Shippensburg Masonic Lodge, marched the 1,000 pound, Pennsylvania marble cornerstone from King Street up the hill to its current location (the front, right hand corner of Old Main).   Fun Fact: The cornerstone contained a time capsule that was opened during the school's 100th anniversary. It contained a charter of the school, newspapers, a bible, coins, programs from the cornerstone laying, a list of trustees, and a copy of the Masonic Register of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania.  It would be two more years before the building was completed. The building was state-of-the-art, with indoor plumbing, steam heat, and a gas lighting system.  In the spring of 1873 the faculty were hired, and first class of students recruited. The school opened on April 15, 1873, and the first class of 217—93 women, 124 men, began taking classes. The first students would graduate from the two-year program in 1875. If you can imagine, this one building was was the entire campus for the first several years. The top two floors were the dorms, with the men living on the east and women living on the west side. The students were forbidden from going in the other gender's wing. Along with the students, the top two floors also held the apartments for the school principal and teachers. The bottom floors held the dining area, classrooms, and the chapel. Additionally, because this was a school to train teachers, the school as equipped with a Model School—the first of four model schools or lab schools that would be on our campus. The original lab school was located where the Registrar's Office is today. Our current lab school is the Grace B. Luhrs Elementary School. Also located in Old Main, is the Chapel. This was a central meeting space where all of the members of the Cumberland Valley Normal School could meet, a space for plays, programs, and speakers, but it also was meant as a religious space where all students were required to attend daily worship services led by the President. Students had assigned seats, and if they did not attend, they would be marked absent.  The chapel was strictly segregated by gender—with men sitting on one side, and women on the other. In fact, life was highly regimented for the students well into the 1960s. Women commonly wore dresses and men wore suits and ties to class. Formal dress was also required in the dining hall, and your food was brought to you at the table by students serving as waiters and waitresses. All lights were turned off at 10 PM, and students could only visit town on Saturday nights with permission. Curfew was strictly set at 10 PM for those outings.

Before beginning the History Walking Tour of the original part of our campus, it is necessary to understand how it came to be.

In the early 1800s, a movement swept Pennsylvania championing the idea that all Pennsylvanian children should be able to receive a free education. Public schools began popping up around the state, and then in 1857, the legislature passed the Normal School Act. 

The Normal School Act was designed to train teachers for all those new public schools. They were called “normal” schools because many people teaching in those new schools had no previous training — and the goal was to introduce teachers to the acceptable “norms” that they should follow.

Fun Fact: Originally, the university was named the Cumberland Valley State Normal School. This name lasted from 1870 to 1927. 


Shippensburg University Old Main

Besides being a location for pictures, this place was were many students used this place to meet as well as hang out. During the Vietnam War, students would organize anti-war protests at the Army War College in Carlisle. They would meet at the fountain before carpooling to Carlisle. In past years, when the fountain was emptied for the winter, the school used to decorate it as a Christmas tree. Freshmen were not allowed to hang out near the fountain during their first semester. This was supposedly meant to give freshmen a greater love for the fountain in their following year as a student. It was much easier to tell who was a freshmen - first year students from the 1930s until 1971 would wear a beanie, known as a Dink, Black bow-ties, Black socks, and large sign proclaiming them a freshman that would hang around their neck. Freshmen had to wear these until the Homecoming game or face a punishment. These first year students could also be stopped by the upperclassmen and could be asked questions regarding the school. If they could not answer correctly, they would then be thrown into the fountain.

The fountain is one of the most iconic, and most photographed, places on the Shippensburg University campus. The cast-iron fountain designed by the J.W. Fiske Company of New York City was donated by the Class of 1896 at the time of their graduation.  

The fountain has seen many different uses over its long history. President Dr. Samuel Martin’s children, Emily and Drew, enjoyed swimming in the fountain on hot summer days, it was a favorite meeting spot, and also was, and still is, a regular spot for portraits and group pictures.


The Fountain in Front of Old Main

At the time of its construction, the building was state of the art. It was equipped with athletic and recreational spaces. According to students writing for the Normal School's Literary Gazette: “The basement was occupied by the bowling alleys, the dressing room, and bathrooms. There were shower, spray, and needle baths, and all toilet conveniences, together with ample dressing rooms for both sexes. On the main floor was the gymnasium proper, surrounded by a running track which was suspended from the trusses of the roof. On this floor, also, was the office of the physical education director and the examining rooms..." Students attended physical education class here, put on shows here, held dances and plays here, trained here, and of course the basketball team competed here. It is believed that the legendary athlete, Jim Thorpe, may have played here when the Carlisle Indian Industrial School basketball team competed against the Cumberland Valley Normal School team in the early 1900s.

This building is the second oldest building on our campus. It opened in 1895 and was the first gymnasium. 

There have been a total of four gymnasiums on our campus - the first being Stewart Hall, Henderson Gymnasium, the Field House, and now the Ship Rec. 

In 1937, President Leslie Rowland secured funds for the new gymnasium, now the Henderson Gymnasium, which would be equipped with a swimming pool. The school needed to find a new use for this building. On Alumni Day, May 27, 1950, the remodeled building was dedicating in honor of John Keats Stewart and Harriet Wylie Stewart as the new campus student union. In the 1970s, the new student union was constructed. Stewart Hall became the home of the Communication Journalism Department. For a few years following, it was also the home of Shippensburg's children theater - the Little Princess Playhouse.

Stewart Hall

Shippensburg State Teachers College President Leslie Rowland used those funds to build these two connected buildings. On the right was the new lab school, which would be later renamed the Rowland School. It would serve as the third campus lab school from the 1941 to 2002. The front façade that was designed to resemble a little red schoolhouse. This building in 1941 was the state-of-the-art new science center. It would continue as the science center until Franklin Science Center was approved in 1967. The building is currently the home of the Geoenvironmental Studies Department—and the home to one of our newest majors—the major in Sustainability.

These two building were constructed in the late 1930s. It was still the Great Depression, and these two buildings were part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal jobs program meant to use public construction projects to provide jobs to unemployed workers. In 1937, the federal Public Works Administration release $56 million for construction projects in educational institutions in Pennsylvania.

Rowland and Shearer Hall

The new library could seat 200 students, and had open library shelves with a collection of 16,000 volumes, six newspapers and 150 periodicals. By comparison, our library today has over 350,000 books, 25,000 e-journals, and 1.5 million items on microfilm. In 1966, ground was broken for the new campus library which kept the name Ezra Lehman Memorial Library, but which moved to the new center of the campus. Students, faculty, and staff assisted with the move by carrying books from here to the new library. Professor Bill Kingsley helped out by shuttling books to the new library on his motorcycle. This building would become the home of the Art &amp; Design Department. It was totally renovated in 2010-2011, and received an 80,000 square foot addition—provide spaces for studios, classrooms, two are galleries, and a wide variety of artistic and computer work spaces.  It is also home to the Kauffman Gallery—our wonderful campus Art Gallery that is open to the public, and features art by faculty, students, and artists featured in our extensive campus art collection.

The cornerstone of this building reads 1930. That is the year construction began on what would become the first library building on campus. Originally the library had been attached to the chapel in Old Main.  In 1902 when the chapel was remodeled, the library was moved into the space behind the stage. President Ezra Lehman planned for the new library, and when he died unexpectedly in 1931, it was decided to name the library after him. 

Huber Art Center

Cumberland Drive really marks the division between the pre-World War II campus, and the post-World War II campus. Fittingly, Memorial Auditorium was built to honor the Shippensburg students who lost their lives in World War One and World War II. If you can imagine, the original campus that you just walked through was completely surrounded by cow pastures until the 1940s. In the years following World War II, the campus has grown and flourished with new academic buildings, new residence halls, a new student union, a new library, a new lab school, a new dining hall, new athletic facilities, and even the Luhrs Performing Arts Center. And the campus keeps growing, changing, and adapting to meet the new needs of a changing world. From what began as a single building and 217 students has grown our modern Shippensburg University. In 2021, Shippensburg University will be celebrating its 150th anniversary. It is pretty amazing to think of how far we have come in those 150 years, but also to think that we are part of a that great tradition and history that has continued for nearly a century and a half.

Shippensburg University Virtual History Walking Tour

Memorial Auditorium

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Additional Information