Designing a Department: The History of Architecture Instruction at Penn State
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In an essay in the November 1950 issue of Froth, a Penn State
student magazine, Dick Neuweiler ('53 B.A. Arts and Letters)
shares his perceptions of the University’s architecture program, commenting
on the long hours spent in studio—even on the weekends!—the nerve-wracking “process
of elimination” at the end of the sophomore year and, on a more upbeat
note, the many honors that Penn State architecture students receive.
Although he pokes fun at the architecture students’ industriousness,
in the end he praises the program. “Today Penn State’s department
of architecture ranks as one of the nation’s best… this course
assures students of the best instruction and assistance.”
More than 50 years have passed, but today’s Department of Architecture is quite similar to the one Neuweiler describes. The long hours in studio are a constant, and the students are continuously racking up awards. But the history of the department actually dates back another 40 years, to 1910, when the first courses in architecture were offered as part of the architectural engineering curriculum. The following article provides an overview of the history of architecture instruction at Penn State, touching on just a sampling of the people and events that have made the department what it is today.
The Early Years
A formal Department of Architecture was established in 1922 in the School
of Engineering, with two separate baccalaureate programs in architecture
and architectural engineering. According to Michael Bezilla, in his book, Engineering
Education at Penn State: A Century in the Land-Grant Tradition, the
architecture program combined courses in the liberal arts with professional
training, focusing on creative planning, design of structures and architectural
history. The architectural engineering program, in contrast, continued to
emphasize the technical aspects of structural engineering. Although students
chose to focus on either architecture or architectural engineering, there
was still substantial overlap between the two curriculums, and today architecture
students continue to take their technical courses from architectural engineering
faculty, while architecture faculty teach theory and history courses to both
architecture and architectural engineering students.
By the late 1920s, the Penn State architecture department was one of the largest in the nation. Notable faculty in the early years, who each had a stint as department head, included Clinton L. Harris, Alfred L. Kocher, Lewis F. Pilcher and Roy I. Webber. Enrollment reached a high of 163 in 1930, but then dropped to 83 during the Depression years of 1935-36. In 1948, the curriculum changed from a four-year to a five-year program. Between 1948 and 1962, the number of students increased from 158 to 256. Today the department enrolls about 230 undergraduate students.
New Building for SALA
The Stuckeman Family Building for the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture is scheduled to open its doors in fall 2005. Construction began in October 2003, following a ceremonial groundbreaking in March 2003. The building will be named in honor of H. Campbell “Cal” Stuckeman ('37 B.S. Arch.) and his late wife, Eleanor, who provided the $10 million lead gift for the new facility.
Completion of the Stuckeman Family Building will unite, for the first time, virtually all facilities in the College of Arts and Architecture in the Arts Quadrant of the University Park campus. In addition to the logistical benefits, the 111,000-square-foot facility, located adjacent to the Arts Building and beside the Palmer Museum of Art, will offer cutting-edge technologies plus ample studio and classroom space, making it a welcoming and comfortable “home” for SALA students and faculty.
The building will be the first new Penn State structure designed to meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s national criteria for certification as environmentally friendly, sustainable architecture. SALA faculty and students played an important role in the development of this facility and its environment, collaborating with lead architects Overland Partners of San Antonio, Texas, and WTW Architects of Pittsburgh, along with the landscape architecture firm La Quatra Bonci, also of Pittsburgh. Their collaboration in the design of the building set the stage for the future inter-college collaborations that will be made easier by the structure’s location.
For more information on the building, including construction updates and live web cams, visit the building update page for SALA.
Professional Practice and Academic Life
Once the department regained its strength following the Depression, a number of well-known and highly respected architects joined the ranks.
Milton Osborne headed the department from 1945 until his retirement in 1962. A widely recognized authority on community planning, he was also well known for his sketches of historic buildings. He continued his professional practice while at Penn State, serving as architectural adviser for the remodeling of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farmhouse, among other projects.
Alumnus and retired architecture faculty member Arthur Anderson ('56 B.Arch.), who taught at Penn State from 1973 through 2000, credits Osborne for turning him on to the architecture profession. “When I was in ninth grade, I had to write an essay about my career aspirations,” remembers Anderson, who was born and raised in State College. “I didn’t know much about architecture, so I went and knocked on Milton Osborne’s door—not knowing I should go through the secretary—but he was very gracious and welcomed me into his office. From then on I wanted to be an architect.”
Gifford Albright ('53 Bachelor of Arch. Engineering), who served on the architectural engineering faculty from 1958 through 1990, also speaks highly of Osborne. “He was a very distinguished gentleman… The faculty in our department in the 1950s were real role models because of their professional experience,” says Albright, who was the first Penn State student to receive a bachelor of architectural engineering degree.
Other notable faculty who joined the department in the 1940s were Philip F. Hallock ('35 B.S., '37 M.S. Arch.) and A. William Hajjar, both of whom maintained successful professional practices in addition to their teaching responsibilities.
Hajjar, who passed away in December 2000, designed about 100 State College homes during his nearly 20 years at Penn State, including his own. In his academic life, he conducted innovative experiments with “airwall” construction, where a protective “skin” of glass is hung around the building’s entire surface, ideally eliminating problems of weatherproofing and maintenance.
Hajjar was also a strong proponent of studying abroad. In recognition of that, his family and friends established the William and Anne Bortz Hajjar Memorial Scholarship to offset architecture students’ travel costs during their required semester abroad in Rome.
