Harold E. Stassen
Harold E. Stassen graduated high school one year early, was elected governor of the state at age 31 and helped write the United Nations charter as part of the American delegation to the first UN conference. Remarkably, Stassen achieved all of this before beginning his academic career as President of Penn. Read more ...
Henry Howard Houston Estate
Penn trustee Henry Howard Houston (1820-1895) dropped out of school at age 14—then went on to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Philadelphia. Read more ...
Furness’ Library
The Fisher Fine Arts Library is one of the most beautiful buildings on Penn’s campus, and is considered one of architect Frank Furness' greatest achievements. Read more ...
Doc Farrell
Edward Stephen “Doc” Farrell came to Penn in the fall of 1919 and quickly established himself as a standout on the freshman football team. It was a sign of things to come. Read more ...
Britton Chance
Born in landlocked Wilkes-Barre, Britton Chance turned out to be quite the sailor--and one of the most brilliant scientists Penn has ever had. Read more ...
Leonid Brailovsky
Leonid Brailovsky was a bright, promising mathematician who desperately wanted to attend Penn. There was just one problem: Brailovsky was a Jew living in the Soviet Union at a time when the Russian government wasn’t letting many, if any, Jews leave the country. Read more ...
Hui-lin Li
Li was the director of the Morris Arboretum from 1971 to 1974, the first John Bartram Professor of Botany until his retirement in 1979 and the editorial director of the massive book, "Flora of Taiwan." Read more ...
Franz Frederick Exner
Grad student Franz Frederick Exner lived in Philadelphia for just three years, but left behind a valuable record of his time: An impressive collection of 43 photographs. Read more ...
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The civil rights leader visited campus in 1965 as part of a group of panelists for a special seminar titled “Rule of Law,” held at the Penn Museum. Read more ...
International House
It began with the extension of a hand of friendship to foreign students back in 1908. Today, nearly 400 students from 65 countries call I-House home. Read more ...
Hawaii Club
The Penn Hawaii Club keeps the “Aloha spirit” and island traditions alive here in West Philly, even as they’re hundreds of miles away from the archipelagic U.S. state. Read more ...
The Penn Band & John Philip Sousa
He was America’s “March King,” so it was only fitting that John Philip Sousa paid several visits to the well-regarded Penn Band back in the day. Read more ...
Franklin Field Press Box
Early last century, sportswriters at Franklin Field had it tough: They had to dictate stories, by phone, from an open-air press box atop the old stadium’s single-deck wooden stands. Read more ...
Van Pelt Library
It’s almost impossible to imagine Penn, or at least College Green, without the Van Pelt Library.
But it was actually just 45 years ago, on Oct. 22, 1962, that Penn officials celebrated the opening of a building that is now a campus landmark. Read more ...
Dr. Benjamin Rush
Rush, widely considered to be the “father of American psychiatry,” held the chairs of “Institutes, Medical and Clinical Practice” at Penn in the late 18th century and, in 1796, received the additional professorship of “the Practice of Physic.” Read more ...
The Curtis Organ
Originally built in 1926 by the Austin Organ Company for the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the Curtis Organ was later purchased by Saturday Evening Post publisher Cyrus H.K. Curtis, who in turn donated it to Penn, so that it could be installed in Irvine. Read more ...
Meyerson's legacy
The University community was saddened last month to learn of the death of former Penn President Martin Meyerson, at the age of 84. Meyerson, who led the University from 1970 to 1981, was the first city planner to serve as president of a research university. Read more ...
Penn's aviation innovator
Hugh Laussat Willoughby was known as a bit of a high flyer in his years as a Penn undergrad. A superb athlete, he became Penn’s first broad-jump champion by soaring 18 feet-3 ½ inches at an 1876 track meet. He gained more widespread fame later in life, though, as one of America’s most famous aviators and airplane designers. Read more ...
Royal treatment
Among the guests at the 1964 retirement party of famed Penn ophthalmologist Dr. Harold G. Scheie (center) was Lord Earl Louis Mountbatten (left), a member of the British royal family and former Supreme Allied Commander in Southeast Asia during World War II. Read more ...
Penn Club
Penn’s Club of New York opened, in 1900, in four ground-floor rooms in the Royalton Hotel. Read more ...
Thomas W. Evans
Penn Dental’s Evans Building is named after the school’s first major benefactor, Thomas W. Evans, a man who lived most of his life on the other side of the Atlantic, in Paris, France. Read more ...
Skimmer
Before there was Spring Fling, there was “Skimmer”—an annual rite of spring for Penn students, held mostly in Fairmount Park, featuring concerts, dances, athletic events and, most prominently, lots of
partying. Read more ...
R. Tait McKenzie
R. Tait McKenzie, a Canadian-born sculptor, started out his career as Penn’s first professor of physical education in 1904. Read more ...
The Valley Forge experiment
Early last century, Penn seriously considered a plan to build a new campus—a sort of Penn-in-miniature—way out in Valley Forge. Read more ...
Before and after at Annenberg
The sleek glass-sheathed Annenberg School building that rose up on campus in 1962 gave its students a fittingly modern home from which to conduct their communications research. Read more ...
Schooling the teachers
Miss Illman’s Training School for Kindergarten-Primary Teachers, a demonstration school once located at 4000 Pine Street, awarded certificates to teachers upon completion of a two to three-year program. The school had a special relationship with Penn starting in the 1930s. Read more ...
Quakers on ice
With four games left to play in the 1978 season, Penn ice hockey coach Bob Finke learned the news from a Daily Pennsylvanian reporter: Because of budget restraints, the University was dropping hockey as a varsity sport. Read more ...
War games
A photograph we dug up from the University Archives shows a scene unlikely to play out in University City anytime soon: Penn students in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) going through a training exercise behind the University Museum. Read more ...
Settlement House
Penn’s Christian Association, in existence now for more than a century, has pioneered gay and lesbian peer counseling programs, formed a Black Students League and launched a Women’s Erotic Empowerment series. It has also consistently advocated for peace and justice through direct action and dialogue. Read more ...
In his prime
In April 1968—just two months before he was assassinated in California—Robert F. Kennedy took to the Palestra stage during a campaign stop and lit up the Penn crowd. Read more ...
College girls
When Charles Dana Gibson began drawing his “Gibson Girl” sketches in the early 1900s he intended the drawings—pictures of elite young women looking oh-so-haughty—to be a form of satire. Seems that some folks didn’t get the joke. Read more ...
Let the sun shine in
What we now know as Penn Presbyterian Medical Center started out, in 1871, as a 45-bed charitable institution called the Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia that was located on 2 ½ acres at 39th Street and Powelton Avenue. Read more ...
In memoriam
The Sophomore Cremation Exercise may seem a little morbid these days, but from 1877 to about 1930, it was a rite of passage for Penn students. Read more ...
A throwback
Even the most fanatical of football fans is unlikely to know much about the “delayed pass” or “flying interference.” But those two plays, introduced by former Penn coach George Washington Woodruff, helped put Penn football at the top of the football world in the late 1890s. Read more ...
