Celebrating early years of an iconic university

Widener University’s community will gather for the sesquicentennial celebration of Old Main.

It is known simply as Old Main.

And today is a very special day for Old Main, which sits in a very special place in the city of Chester.

It was on this date in 1868 that they opened the building on 14th Street in Chester. At that time, it was known as the Pennsylvania Military Academy.

Note that date. The cornerstone of Old Main was laid in June 1867, two years after the end of the Civil War. Old Main was built for $125,000 to accommodate 150 cadets and officers.

They opened the doors the following year, in September 1868, under the direction of Col. Theodore Hyatt, the first of three generations of Hyatts to command the school.

One hundred and fifty years later, celebrities and other notables intertwined with the rich history of what would eventually become known as Pennsylvania Military College and today Widener University will gather for the sesquicentennial celebration of Old Main.

Among those on hand will be university President Julie E. Wollman, the 10th president in the school’s history – and the first woman to head the iconic institution.

Electricity, then something not taken for granted, did not arrive at Old Main for another 20 years. In those two decades the building already had been devastated by a fire and rebuilt. While Old Main was rebuilt, the school operated out of the Ridley Park Hotel.

Old Main housed all classrooms, offices and dormitories for decades before the extensive expansion of the campus following World War II.

Today Old Main houses the university’s administrative offices, including the office of the president.

It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

Widener is now a co-ed, liberal arts center of higher learning with seven schools and colleges. It is home to more than 3,400 undergraduate students.

But it is those early, formative years that will be saluted today. The university will launch the sesquicentennial party as the leadoff event for Homecoming Weekend.

Guests will gather on the lawn of the building on East 14th Street. In addition to Wollman, they will hear from Ron Romanowicz, Class of 1968 and Chairman of the PMC Museum Committee, and David Guelke, founder of the Chester Historical Preservation Committee.

They will retrace a history whose roots lie in a boarding school in Wilmington, Del., under the tutelage of prominent local resident John Bullock.

He founded the Bullock School for Boys. Ironically, Bullock was a Quaker and pacifist. He likely never had an inkling that the institution he founded was destined to be one of the nation’s premier military schools.

Bullock died in 1847, with the school passing to teacher Samuel Alsop.

He expanded the school before selling to Theodore Hyatt, then the headmaster of a Presbyterian boarding school in 1853. In 1858, Hyatt added a military component to the school.

Hyatt apparently was inspired by seeing groups of students performing drills with brooms, a tradition that is still honored and recreated each year during Homecoming.

In 1859, Hyatt incorporated his Hyatt Select School for Boys as the Delaware Military Academy.

Hyatt eventually found himself in the middle of the raging dispute that would lead up to the Civil War, prompting him eventually to lease a new location in West Chester in 1862, when the Pennsylvania Military Academy was granted a charter by the state. In 1866, the school moved to new, temporary facilities in the city of Chester.

In 1892, the academy was renamed Pennsylvania Military College, or PMC. Finally, in 1972, under the tutelage of President Dr. Clarence Moll, the name of the school was changed to Widener, in honor of the prominent Philadelphia family, to more accurately reflect growth and diversity.

“If the walls of Old Main could talk they would tell the story of Widener’s rich history, including the common threat woven throughout 15 decades – that it is a space devoted to molding and shaping leaders of strong character,” Wollman said.

We salute its 150 years of excellence, a beacon to the city of Chester and the region.