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Home : Quarterly Archives : Volume 24 |
Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society |
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Source: January 1986 Volume 24 Number 1, Pages 17–34 The Valley Forge Project of the University of Pennsylvania "The inspirational value to the undergraduate student body," Henry N. Woolman wrote in a letter to William Miller, the comptroller of the University of Pennsylvania, on January 9, 1926, "of a location close to Historic Valley Forge appeals to me. I have therefore decided to present to the University of Pennsylvania a tract of land of approximately 170 acres close to Valley Forge Park to be held for the uses of the University. This tract may be used as a University Country Club for Golf, Polo, Spring and Fall Foot Ball training, and other athletic activities until such time as the Trustees of the University deem wise to use same for the purposes I have in mind. I shall want the gift as a memorial to my parents." It was an offer that for the next decade threatened to create a serious schism between the alumni and the administration of the University as to the future direction of the University! Henry N. Woolman was a graduate of the College in the Class of 1898 and a prominent alumnus, active in the campaigns of the University of Pennsylvania Fund. In 1922 he had been elected to the Board of Trustees of the General Alumni Society. He was also an executive of the Supplee-Wills-Jones Milk Company, with which he had previously merged his family's dairy operations that had been started by his grandfather in 1802. The tract of land "close to Valley Forge Park" was the old Havard-Davis property in Tredyffrin Township, on which the house used by General Louis DuPortail as his quarters during the winter encampment at Valley Forge still stands. Woolman had just recently entered into an agreement of sale to purchase the 178-acre property on Valley Forge Road, north of New Centreville. His offer was, to a large extent, prompted by several conversations he had had with Miller. In them Miller had "suggested," as Woolman put it in his letter, that "the City of Philadelphia is encroaching upon the grounds of the University so rapidly it might be necessary at some future time to have some of the undergraduate departments moved." In his fund-raising efforts, Miller had also found, it was noted by Edward Potts Cheney in his History of the University of Pennsylvania. 1740-1940, "that many of the College alumni declared themselves dissatisfied with the city location of the University and gave that as a reason for sending their sons elsewhere and for feeling such a languid interest in its affairs." Their preference, it appeared, was for a smaller college or detached university that provided, as Cheney described it, a "better ideal of college life" in "more healthy and attractive surroundings," a setting that allowed "more leisure for reading and communication" and a "closer intercourse among the students with the Faculty." As early as in 1913 there had been concern about "the future development of buildings and grounds and conservation of the surrounding territory" around the University. In a report in that year, it was observed by Dr. Paul Cret, Dr. Warren F. Laird, and Frederick E. Olmstead, a three-man committee appointed by the Board of Trustees, that "a brief review of the past forty years shows with startling clearness the difficulties that threaten future growth — not during another forty years, nor yet twenty, but even of so short a term as ten. These difficulties are manifold and require heroic and continuous measures, if the University is to escape irretrievable harm; measures that will provide needed areas, guard against grave detriments from outside, and insure a logical, coherent, economical and protected growth within." Or, as Woolman himself later observed, "The Valley Forge Ideal grew out of the apprehension of many devoted alumni and friends that the inevitable pressure of metropolitan conditions, present and future, would more and more seriously interfere with the normal and vigorous development, spiritual as well as physical, of the University and its work. The new railroad terminal [the 30th Street station] and other great projects on both sides of the Schuylkill will in a relatively few years transform the character of this district and bring the present site of the University right into the heart of one of the big business centers of the Philadelphia of the future. ... If, as a result of conditions over which she has no control, the springs that feed her cultural life may be dried up, and her character changed into a municipal institution, all curriculum and no atmosphere, a study of alternatives becomes imperative — hence Valley Forge." By May the Cressbrook Farm had become the property of Henry Woolman. He then, according to the minutes of the Board of Trustees, "indicated his willingness" to place it in the hands of certain Trustees, to be transferred formally to the Trustees within a definite period, provided that within that period the Trustees had given "evidence of their intention to transfer a substantial part of the University, especially the undergraduate departments, to that site." At the June meeting the Trustees resolved that a committee of five Trustees be appointed "to consider and report to the Trustees on the feasibility and wisdom of transferring the undergraduate and other departments of the University to said tract at Valley Forge"* (Woolman also offered a gift of $5000 to defray the expenses of this Committee, it also having been resolved by the Trustees that before the Committee expended any funds a deposit of this amount be made for the study.) Four months later Edward Hopkinson Jr. accepted the chairmanship of the Trustees' "Committee on the Valley Forge Project." The other members of the Committee were Charles L. Borie, Charles Day, Judge John Marshall Gest, and Dr. J. Norman Henry. "The announcement of the appointment of a Trustee Committee," it was observed editorially in the Daily Pennsylvanian. "for the purpose of studying the practicality of moving the University's undergraduate schools to the Valley Forge tract ... marks another progressive step in [University of] Pennsylvania history. ... The members of the committee occupy positions of leadership in their respective professions or vocations. The group includes bankers, architects, engineers — men in various walks of life, who are recognized authorities in their various lines. ... It is universally recognized that the decision will be an important one — that it will affect the future of the University." The scope and method of investigation to be followed by the Committee in making its study was outlined by the chairman, who defined eleven topics to be studied and reported on by various sub-committees. They included the present and proposed plans for West Philadelphia; the "line of division" between the activities to be moved to Valley Forge and to be retained at the present campus; the construction needed at Valley Forge for these activities, and its cost; the suitability and adequacy of the Valley Forge site; methods of financing the program; .its effect on instructional efficiency; the effect on athletics; the effect on fraternities and collateral activities; legal questions; the utilization and development of the West Philadelphia campus in the event of partial removal of the University; and the comparative appeal of the respective sites. The Committee also invited Dr. Frederick J. Kelly, Dean of Administration at the University of Minnesota, to make a brief preliminary study of "what units, if any, should be removed from the present site." His confidential findings were that separating the undergraduate College of Arts and Sciences from the rest of the instruction was "well nigh impossible," and that separating the group of undergraduate schools and colleges from the graduate school could be "very costly, permanently embarrassing, and contrary to well-recognized modern trends in higher education." He further noted that moving both the undergraduate and graduate schools, "while attended with real difficulty, would seem less serious than the other two from the standpoint of all the education relations involved." In the meantime, on June 4 the Board of Directors of the General Alumni Society met at Cressbrook Farm, Informed of Woolman's offer of the farm to the University as a site for the undergraduate schools, it went on record attesting "its grateful appreciation of the offer of Mr. Woolman" and its "thanks for his liberality and loyalty" to the University, It also pledged its cooperation in the "purposes now presented." On November 2S, 1928 the president of the General Alumni Society, Dr. J, Norman Henry, appointed a separate Alumni Committee on Valley Forge, Its chairman was E. Wallace Chadwick, and the secretary, Horace Mather Lippincott. Its work was also divided among several subcommittees, concerned with the educational aspects; legal aspects; physical aspects; financial aspects; and undergraduate activities; with additional subcommittees for publicity and alumni sentiment, (At the end of the meeting Dr. Henry, who had been elected to the Board of Trustees, resigned the presidency of the General Alumni Society, and Henry Woolman was elected as his successor to fill the unexpired term,) In the following March the Alumni Committee made a preliminary report to the General Alumni Society, Among its findings were that, in the opinion of the Committee, "the ultimate removal of a considerable portion of the University departments from the present location in West Philadelphia is inevitable" and "in the course of a comparatively few years [will] be an absolute necessity, by reason of the changing physical conditions in West Philadelphia"; that the Woolman gift offered "a proper suburban site" for the relocation; that a transfer of such departments to a site such as Valley Forge "presents no insuperable obstacles and could be effected in a practical manner"; and that acceptance of Woolman's offer would "give a tremendous impetus" to the Alumni Fund, It was also suggested that the General Alumni Board request that the Board of Trustees instruct its Committee "to cooperate with the [Alumni] committee by conferences and exchange of data, to the end that the problems and questions may be thoroughly discussed and proper solutions found." The report was accepted by the General Alumni Board and presented to the Board of Trustees; at their April meeting the Trustees referred it to their Committee on the Valley Forge Project, During this period considerable enthusiasm for the project was expressed by members of the alumni. Commenting on Woolman's offer, in the July 1926 issue of The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle, published quarterly by the General Alumni Society, Horace Mather Lippincott had written an article entitled "The Problem of a College in the City." "We are attracting average students by the thousands," Lippincott observed, "We need to do something of such quality and distinction that we will attract more students of the unusual type who have the will, the background and the opportunity to make the best of themselves. The freedom, beauty and inspiration of the country contrasted with the city from which people nowadays try to escape . . . is marked. Ask the next alumnus you meet where he is sending his boy — in what environment and intimacy he wants him placed." (He also noted, "When the University moved to West Philadelphia and for many years thereafter during the era of the horse car, the campus was 40 minutes from Broad and Market Streets. Electric trains from Broad Street to Devon on the Main Line of the Pennsylvania Railroad and motor bus to Valley Forge at the present time make this site more accessible than the University was when it moved to West Philadelphia.") Copies of the article were reprinted in pamphlet form and distributed among the alumni. Several hundred replies were received, of which almost one hundred were published in the April 1927 issue of The General Magazine — with the observation that "the stimulation of thought upon the subject as widely as possible is desirable in order to ascertain all points of view and thus ensure a wise conclusion" — under the heading "Graduate Opinion About Valley Forge." (Half of the letters published were from alumni living in Pennsylvania, many of them in the Philadelphia area, but there were also letters from graduates in seventeen other states, from Connecticut to California, Their classes covered a span from the Class of 1867 to the Class of 1926.) Virtually all of them were most enthusiastic about the proposed move. "I am heartily in accord with the idea of moving Pennsylvania to Valley Forge," one alumnus wrote, "and think it will be the salvation of the University." "To me it seems the only far-sighted way of restoring a genuine college of liberal arts," another responded, "I am firmly and irrevocably for it," wrote another, adding, "I am not blind to numerous difficulties, but I believe none of them is insurmountable. If we have the will, the rest is a matter of work and patience." "I believe that the problem at hand," another put it, "is not shall we do it but how and when can it be done." Woolman's offer also inspired the offer of a gift of another tract of land, the 35-acre "old Holland farm" at Swedesford and Valley Forge roads, "virtually adjoining" Cressbrook Farm. The offer, subject to action within one year "assuring the location of the University adjoining Valley Forge Park," was made in December 1926 by J. Howard Mecke, a resident of Tredyffrin. It too was referred to the Trustees' Committee, but when no official action had been taken by June 1928, the offer was withdrawn. With the amendment of the University's charter, which now provided for 40 rather than 24 Trustees, in April 1928, the Board of Trustees was reorganized. At the same time, the composition of the Trustees' Committee was also changed slightly; it now included Messrs. Hopkinson, Borie, and Day, Dr, Henry, and George Frazier, and also Frederick L. Ballard and Judge J, Whittaker Thompson. (Both Ballard and Thompson were also members of the Alumni Committee and had been recently elected to the reorganized Board of Trustees,) Following these appointments, Joseph Harmar Penniman, the Provost of the University, noted that the work of the Trustees' Committee had been interrupted by the reorganization of the Trustees" and urged "early consideration of the Valley Forge matter." In early June the chairman of the Committee reported to the Trustees that a meeting with the Alumni Committee was "planned for the near future." By this time, the Alumni Committee on Valley Forge had already completed its study and made a report of its findings. Its report had also been unanimously approved by the General Alumni Board, the National Conference of the Associated Pennsylvania Clubs, and at the annual meeting of the Organized Classes of the University, and had been published in the April 1928 issue of The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle under the title "The Valley Forge Ideal and the University of Pennsylvania." The report included the findings of several of the sub-committees. The committee on Legal Aspects, it was reported, "is satisfied that there are no legal obstacles toward the removal of some of the undergraduates to the country or the establishment of parts of the University's work beyond the city's boundaries." The committee on Educational Aspects felt that "the College, the Wharton School and Law School might, to advantage, be removed to Valley Forge, with the traditional four years' course in the Arts and Sciences in "the position of a distinct College affiliated with the University, perhaps to be known as Franklin College of the University of Pennsylvania," though this proposed division was described as "only a suggestion." The committee on Physical Aspects noted that the "encroachment of business places — on the West Philadelphia campus] is already so marked as to give a fair indication of the future" and that members of "the faculty and of the student body emphatically assert that the noise, smoke, dirt and general traffic conditions of the present location render teaching inefficient and health precarious." It also noted that the Valley Forge site contained 178 acres as compared with 80 acres in West Philadelphia, and the report included maps showing that "the present plot of our own University and of Princeton each ... superimposed upon the Valley Forge tract lies easily within its limits." The committee on Undergraduate Activities, it was reported, "considered the Glee Club, Chess, the Band, Class Activities, Christian Association, all athletics, Student Employment, and Fraternities, and can find no obstacle or interference to these in the suggested removal." With these findings by the sub-committees, the Committee reported it was "willing to be understood now as believing that such a transfer of undergraduate departments or Colleges to the proposed site at Valley Forge is not only desirable but pregnant with possibilities for the future of the University." "Without underestimating the difficulties, financial and administrative, which will undoubtedly be entailed," it stated, "we believe the goal justifies the effort, and we propose to direct our attention in the immediate future to the consideration of ways and means of avoiding or surmounting the admitted difficulties, to the end that some way may be found to assure to the University the benefits of Mr. Woolman's proposal, to be utilized in whatever manner, within the spirit of his offer, may be determined to be most advantageous. We feel a reasonable confidence that such a result can be realized by the combined effort of the Trustees, the Officers of Administration, the Faculties and an enthusiastic and united Alumni." The report concluded with the comments George Wharton Pepper had made, in his "A Summary of the Situation Confronting the University" which had appeared in the June 1926 issue of The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle. "We must choose," he had noted, in part, "between a City College — all curriculum and no atmosphere — and a college in which the student can do good academic work while leading a distinctively academic life. We can develop a first-class City College in West Philadelphia. . We cannot there generate the academic atmosphere which we crave. It is a clear-cut choice. We cannot straddle. ... It is West Philadelphia or Valley Forge. ... If the Alumni are to decide the question they will naturally be strong for Valley Forge. ..." The Alumni report, incidentally, got the immediate attention of the Mayor of Philadelphia. Speaking at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Bellevue Stratford in January, Mayor Mackey opposed the plan and stated that the City would make extensive improvements in the area where the University was to keep it there and that Philadelphia could not afford to lose the University and its 17,000 students who spend" in the neighborhood of $8,000,000 annually" in the city. The vice-president of the General Alumni Society, Ralph Morgan, quickly replied that "the proposal is not to remove the University as a whole, but only a portion of it, about 5,000 students in fact, leaving some 10,000 to 15,000 students still attending the University at the present site." The chairman of the Trustees' Committee, Edward Hopkinson jr., went even further: "The talk of moving to Valley Forge," he said at a dinner of the West Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce a few days later, at which the mayor was present, "was forced upon the Trustees. However, no decision in the matter has been made. If conditions can be developed in the vicinity of the University to a more ideal status, the institution will remain. If not, it will go." After many delays, in early October 1928 the Trustees1 Committee, together with the Committees on the College of Liberal Arts and on Business Education and the officers of the University, met with the Alumni Committee on Valley Forge. It was also announced that the Trustees' Committee would continue to meet monthly from then on, to expedite its study. (Samuel H. French, in the Daily Pennsylvania, observed that there had been "enough committees to move the University to California, instead of only to Valley Forge"!) Finally, in the following April the Trustees' Committee, acknowledging its indebtedness to the Alumni "for the pressure which has brought the Valley Forge matter to the point of decision," made its report to the Board of Trustees. In the report, the Committee gave recognition to two "crystallized" points of view. One point of view was to decline the gift of the land at Valley Forge and, instead, "to enlarge and consolidate the present campus ... to a site and campus which will compare favorably with those of other great American Universities." This viewpoint, it was noted, was based on the "unique opportunity in the next five years to improve the physical plant in West Philadelphia" as a result of "plans now underway for the improvement of the West Schuylkill River Bank and the rearrangement of the transportation system to South West Philadelphia"; on the feeling that the University already had "greater responsibilities than it is adequately meeting either from the standpoint of personnel or finances" without the additional responsibilities and costs of the Valley Forge project; and on the belief that the Valley Forge program "would necessarily divide the interest and support of the alumni and public in away that would be detrimental to the whole." The other point of view — and the one reflected in the Committee's recommendations — was "to establish at Valley Forge a new center of culture, which may have a modest beginning, but the development of which can take place as funds are provided for the purpose." As to "what work can and what work cannot with advantage be done at Valley Forge," the Committee reported a unanimous conclusion that it could "at no time contemplate the removal of the whole University to Valley Forge, nor the present removal of any of the departments now existing at West Philadelphia," but that "there should be established at Valley Forge a College of Liberal Arts, which would there have several distinct advantages over any effort to do similar cultural work at West Philadelphia." "The University," the Committee further reported, "would be launching its great experiment in an environment of extraordinary natural beauty and rich in historical associations and memories." While it felt it was "not appropriate to discuss here the details of an educational program," it did note that "it may be stated with confidence that there should be developed at Valley Forge, among other things, a School of American History and Government under conditions which will make an irresistible appeal to the imagination of students." The Committee was also of the opinion that "many of the University Departments, including possibly the work of all Graduate Schools and such undergraduate work as may be inseparably related to them, must continue to be carried on in the present location." The activity at Valley Forge, the Committee further reported, "should be privately endowed," adding that it was "reasonable to expect that substantial gifts towards this item will come from those whose imaginations are stimulated by this new evidence of the University's activity" - without "the effect of diminishing the interest of the Alumni in the University as a whole." With these findings, it was the unanimous conclusion of the Committee that "the Valley Forge opportunity should be preserved for the future benefits of the University if this can be accomplished without crippling present efforts to effect badly needed relief for existing departments of the University," and that the Committee was "in agreement" that the question really was primarily one for the Boards of Liberal Arts and Business Education. To implement these conclusions, the Committee made five recommendations to the Board of Trustees, recommending that "the University request Mr. Woolman to modify his offer so the University can take title to his land under an agreement that will give him the right to call for a reconveyance to him at the end of five years, unless within that period a definite academic project has been established on the site or pledges for at least $1,000,000 toward the accomplishment thereof are in hand"; that "the University provide in its program of pressing needs" a sum of $225,000 to purchase the Wilson Farm (also known as the Lafayette Farm as it was the site of his quarters during the encampment at Valley Forge)which adjoined the Woolman tract and on which Woolman had obtained an option; that further studies be made "relative to the best possible utilization of the combined property"; and that a new "Special Committee shall be appointed to undertake the Valley Forge studies." A report was also presented to the Board of Trustees by the Alumni Committee on Valley Forge, expressing its approval of this report and the recommendations, and at a special meeting of the Trustees on April 10, 1929 the recommendations of the Trustees' Committee were adopted. In a letter of the same date, Woolman revised his offer of Cressbrook Farm "so as to comport" with the first recommendation, reserving for himself the use of "the farmhouse, tenant-house, and barn on the farm, with the curtilage of land surrounding the same" until they were actually needed by the University. This revised offer was also accepted by the Trustees at the special meeting, with the proper officers of the University authorized to enter into an agreement to take title. Following the meeting, Woolman was quoted as being "delighted at the action taken by the Board of Trustees ... in accepting my offer of Cressbrook Farm at Valley Forge with the thought in mind of developing there a new centre of cultural education" and that the step taken "affects not only the University as we know it, but also the University of fifty years or a century and more hence." In the following January the new "Special Committee," headed by George Wharton Pepper, made a report with additional recommendations to the Trustees. Actually, they were basically a restatement and reaffirmation of the policies adopted by the Trustees the previous April: that plans be developed for a College of Liberal Arts at Valley Forge; that other work might also be "carried on more favorably" at Valley Forge and that this possibility should also be further explored; that all work at Valley Forge should be self-sustaining and that no work should be started there until funds for construction and maintenance of the plant were assured; and that in the meantime the full University program should be carried on as hitherto at West Philadelphia. The recommendations were adopted as a resolution by the Board of Trustees on January 10, 1930. (At that meeting, incidentally, the Trustees also approved the award of an honorary Doctor of Science degree to Henry Newbold Woolman.) In March Pepper reported that the vice-provost and a faculty member were to visit England and the Continent in May to observe "the educational processes in effect in the principal foreign universities" as the first step in "the study of the educational aspects" of the problem and the preparation of an educational plan for the College of Liberal Arts" at Valley Forge. The Committee also prepared a questionnaire, to be sent to 20,000 undergraduates, alumni, and faculty members, to seek their opinions and suggestions as to the type of College of Liberal Arts they preferred. Notwithstanding these "first steps," by December the only recommendations of the Committee were that the Trustees again "reaffirm their determination that some or all of the undergraduate work of the University shall be done at Valley Forge when and as educational plans are developed and the necessary funds are forthcoming, and that a Valley Forge Board, composed of members of the Board of Trustees, the faculty and the Alumni, be constituted as a "permanent agency of the Board to study ... all phases of the Valley Forge project," with the present Committee discharged upon the organization of this new Valley Forge Board, At their meeting on January 5, 1931 the Trustees approved the recommendations, and discharged the existing Committee "with the thanks of the Trustees." At the same time, Woolman was nominated and confirmed as the chairman of the new Board of Managers of the Valley Forge Project, (in 1932 the members of this Board included George Wharton Pepper, A. Felix duPont, George F. Snyder and Robert Dechert, from the Trustees; Drs. Joseph F. Willette, J. Wickersham Crawford, and W. E. Livingston from the faculty; E. Wallace Chadwick, Walter B. Saul, and Dr. John L. Haney from the Alumni; Thomas B. Gates and George W. McClelland, ex officio; and F. W. Mumford as secretary.) "In authorizing 'full speed ahead on the Valley Forge project," it was observed in an editorial entitled "Another Countryside College" in the Main Line Daily Times on January 7, 1931, "the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania combine a respect for one of the most cherished of academic traditions with a constructive grasp of necessities in a special case. ... From the middle ages onward educational institutions of the highest standing have prospered culturally and intellectually in the small town or countryside community. It was in Padua and Bologna, rather than Venice, Naples or Rome, that scholastic honors attained their most brilliancy at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance. The classic scholastic symbols of Britain are not London or Glasgow, but Oxford and Cambridge. ... The Valley Forge undertaking ... will foster intellectual and spiritual pursuits in a realm where they can but breathe." In the meantime, in the January 1931 issue of The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle the report made by Vice-Provost George McClelland and Professor J. P. W. Crawford to the Valley Forge Committee on their "Impressions of Higher Education in Great Britain" was reproduced, as was a report by Dr. McClelland on the survey that had been taken. More than 4,000 replies were received, in equal proportions from each group, and were tabulated by the Industrial Research Bureau. The "preferred" College of Liberal Arts, according to the survey, was "a medium-sized college of from 1,000 to 2,000 students," located in "a small college community within thirty miles of a city," with "a student body comprised of both average and outstanding ability." In their freshman and sophomore years the students would live "in small (25-50 students each) dormitory groups" and in their junior and senior years in "a fraternity system." The curriculum in the first year or two would comprise "the required fundamental educational background of human experience, with [the other two or three years of intensive work in one subject or related subjects chosen on the basis of the individual student's intellectual interests." Student activities would include intercollegiate and intramural athletics, and also other activities "such as journalism, executive or managerial experiences, debating, dramatics, music, etc." The need to have "libraries, museums, theaters, lectures and meetings, concerts, churches, etc." available was also noted. The "full speed ahead" noted by the Main Line Daily Times proved to be something less than that. In October 1934- it was brought to the attention of the Executive Board of the Trustees that the five-year period stipulated in the agreement of April 1929 with Woolman had elapsed. Since no academic project had been undertaken on the property, nor one million dollars raised or pledged towards the project, it was pointed out, under the terms of the agreement he could demand that the property be reconveyed to him. But at the same time, it was also noted that Woolman had made no such demand for reconveyance, In the meantime, the University continued to pay taxes and other expenses relating to it from monies in the Valley Forge Special Campaign Fund. The project, however, continued to have the active backing of alumni groups. In the following summer the Philadelphia Committee undertook the development of a plan for "a moderate beginning in the use of Cressbrook Farm at Valley Forge" at "the earliest possible date." At the conference of the Associated Pennsylvania Clubs held in Baltimore in late October it presented a proposal to create "an affiliate undergraduate college at Valley Forge." Observing that "the conception and execution of any ... ambitious plan must be deferred until there shall have been a change in the policy of the University administration with respect to the use of Cressbrook Farm for educational purposes," the plan provided that the Alumni "independently of the University authorities" undertake to create its own Liberal Arts college, one of "basic simplicity ... without undue luxury, extravagances and expensiveness," and to carry it on until it was self-sustaining or "until the University shall be ready to accept the responsibility, financial and otherwise" for its operation. To accomplish this, it was further proposed that a Planning Committee be appointed "to organize, establish and provide for the operation and maintenance of a College of Liberal Arts on the Cressbrook Farm at Valley Forge under such agreements with the University as shall be entered into between such College and said University." The proposal was unanimously approved by the delegates at the Baltimore conference. The president of the Associated Pennsylvania Clubs, Luther Martin 3d, then appointed a Planning Committee, to include Dr. Henry, Dr. Cornelius Weygandt, Judge Robert Lamborn, W. W. Montgomery, E. Wallace Chadwick, and Isaac A. Pennington, who served as chairman. During that same summer of 1935 the Valley Forge project was also being discussed by a special Planning Committee of the Bicentennial Endowment Fund, of which Robert McCracken was the chairman. This committee had been appointed by the administration to develop objectives for a major $10,000,000 fund-raising campaign to be conducted in conjunction with the University's 200th anniversary in 1940. The development of an extension of the campus at Valley Forge was among its preliminary recommendations, although the campus was to be used primarily for social activities, sports, and recreation rather than for any real or substantive educational projects. The plan called for the establishment of tennis courts, a golf course, squash courts, football, polo, track and baseball fields on the site, weekend and vacation use by students, pre-freshman orientations activities, and occasional seminars and group discussions for students and faculty members in the DuPortail house, with also the possibility of working out orientation courses in American citizenship and idealism. These tentative recommendations were first announced to the alumni at the Baltimore conference, at the dinner which followed the business sessions and the adoption of the resolution that the Alumni undertake a "modest" College of Liberal Arts in the same buildings on the same site. They not only obviously fell far short of the alumni's dream of the "Valley Forge Ideal" but, as the Alumni's Planning Committee later reported, it was also immediately apparent that the Fund Planning Committee was "firmly resolved ... that no project for the establishment by the University or by the alumni under the auspices of the University of a college at Valley Forge could be entertained." The two committees held a series of meetings over the winter months and into the spring of 1936. Throughout these discussions, the alumni representatives continued to express "unqualified dissatisfaction with any plan containing provisions for social and recreational uses of the Valley Forge area without provision for a substantial and continuous, although moderate, undergraduate educational program." As a result of these discussions, the Fund Raising Committee modified its proposal. Its final recommendation was for an allocation, under "special projects," of $587,500 for the Valley Forge project, to include $175,000 for the purchase of the Wilson (Lafayette) Farm and $412,000 for the "development of an educational and residential unit at Valley Forge on a modest scale, to conduct with a limited group of students an experiment in teaching and living," its future to "depend upon the degree of success met and the support given," and for the "development of this supplementary Campus ... for the benefit of the whole University, educationally, socially, and recreationally." In March the Valley Forge Committee of the General Alumni Society presented a report, unanimously approved by the Board of Directors of the Society, expressing qualified approval of the modified proposal. In the report, drawn up by Chadwick, it was noted that while the proposal "falls short of the alumni's repeated urgency" regarding a full educational program, the Committee had been "expressly told that further faculty cooperation may produce a much more significant program along these vitally important lines." With this understanding, the Committee therefore endorsed the proposal as "a modest beginning of undergraduate collegiate education at Valley Forge." Similarly, in April Isaac Pennypacker reported that "a majority but no tall of the Planning Committee for the Valley Forge College had individually stated that the proposal, while "lacking a definite declaration of intention to extend the plan to a four-year course at Valley Forge provided the demand develops and the necessary financial support is forthcoming," did "leave the door open" for a four-year College. This majority, he reported, was therefore prepared to support the plan if in the final action of the' Trustees "not less than $300,000 will be allotted to ... the establishment of the educational part of the plan at Cressbrook Farm." On May 22, 1936 the proposal was approved by the Board of Trustees, as part of an overall $12,500,000 Bicentennial Fund Campaign. The program, described as "a thorough and sincere test, under University auspices and direction, to the practicality of offering educational opportunities" at Valley Forge, was also more fully outlined at this time. The program was to start with a freshman class of 30 to 50 men, enrolled as students in the College, with a minimum of thirty required before the "experiment" would be undertaken. Admission to the program was to be limited to students in the top quarter of their class or especially recommended, with high scores in the Scholastic Aptitude Test. The emphasis in the curriculum was to be on American history, government, and English, subjects which, while not requiring costly equipment, are basic in preparation for enlightened American citizenship," with other courses to be selected "from the standpoint of their value as a foundation of a liberal education." Instruction was to be given "individually and in small group conferences," but the students would also be taken to the West Philadelphia campus to attend classes not taught at Valley Forge, for lectures on American history and government by senior professors of the University, and to have access to the library and other resources of the University not available at Valley Forge, The DuPortail house was to serve as the "headquarters" building for the Valley Forge campus, withe main barn altered to provide a residence unit for the freshman group, and the tenant house and other small buildings to be used as kitchens, offices, and for supplementary residential and educational purposes. Some alumni still felt that the proposed program provided in fact neither a "thorough" nor "sincere" test of the educational opportunities of the site. Nonetheless, the Committee on Valley Forge College, at the 1936 Conference of Associated Pennsylvania Clubs held in Pittsburgh in November, reported that the project "should not be unacceptable to the alumni, but should be supported as a promise of bigger things in undergraduate education at Valley Forge." To promote alumni contributions to the Valley Forge project, in June 1937 the Bicentennial Committee issued a handsome, illustrated 24-page brochure entitled "Toward Valley Forge." On the cover was a photograph of the equestrian statue of Anthony Wayne (of the Class of 1765), looking out over Cressbrook Farm as he looks towards his Waynesborough home. "A major objective before the University," Thomas S. Gates, the president, observed in the Foreword, "is establishing undergraduate education amid the historic surroundings of Valley Forge. ... As the Bicentennial draws near, Pennsylvania invites the cooperation of the alumni and friends in opening at Valley Forge an inspiring page in its history." In the booklet, the Committee described the proposed program in some detail, noting, "No plan of the University in modern times, perhaps, has had inherent in it the educational significance and opportunities which lie in this proposed development at Valley Forge. Here is a plan for embarking upon a new experiment in undergraduate education which should do much to restore the old values of the small educational group intimately associated and closely guided. Indeed, the plan's effects are likely to reach beyond the group studying at Valley Forge. The constant flow of selected young men of talent and training from Valley Forge to the University of Pennsylvania should further stimulate and invigorate activities there, enriching the intellectual life in every department in the University." While the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin on June 24 described the proposed school at Valley Forge as "fitting," the Daily Pennsylvania was critical of the plan. In an editorial two months earlier it had already described the proposal as "a Utopian dream." Rather than attempt the attainment of "an impossible country atmosphere at Valley Forge," it urged the alumni and the City of Philadelphia to support beautification and improvement of the present campus; all funds, it suggested, should be directed towards such improvements. There was also concern over the plan among some nearer to the Valley Forge site. Howard S. Okie, a Philadelphia attorney living in Tredyffrin Township (and a graduate of the University's Law School), for example, a few years later observed, "The century and a half which have elapsed since the Revolution have seen few changes in the valley and the many residents of our community who are interested in the preservation of our points of local beauty and historic interest rightly regard continuation in its present form as of primary importance. Prediction has been wisely and freely made," he continued, "that the contemplated University development would result ultimately in the growth in Chester Valley of a college town with complete change in the countryside," Nonetheless, the Alumni Committee on Valley Forge continued to urge support of the proposal. In April 1938 it recommended that the Alumni Society "again renew its repeated advocacy of the Valley Forge project" and that it "make the Valley Forge item its principal objective until the $600,000 proposed therefor by the University shall have been raised." In June the alumni held a party at Cressbrook, at which Dr. Henry observed, "The alumni have dreamed a dream from which they have not awakened, even after a period of ten years of discouragement and apathy," At the 25th anniversary Convention of the Associated Pennsylvania Clubs in November Samuel Harnell, the vice-chairman of the Valley Forge Bicentennial Committee, suggested that contributions by the alumni be made "half to the Trustees, unrestricted, and half specifically for the Valley Forge Project." It was not a propitious time for a major fund-raising effort, however. Between February 1937 and October 1939 Standard & Poor's Stock Price Index showed a drop from 18.11 (based on the 194-1-1943 average as 10) to 12.90, a decline of almost a third. (With the fall of France in June of the next year, the Index had dropped even further, to 9.87.) Thus, by the end of October 1939, only $59,391.96 had been contributed specifically for the project, with $23,030.56 in cash and $36,360.40 in pledges. In the meantime, Woolman had exercised his option on the Wilson Farm so that it would be available for purchase by the University as a part of the project as outlined in the Bicentennial Fund campaign. It was acquired by Wilson for $175,000, of which he paid $75,000 in cash, with a $100,000 mortgage for the balance. Recognizing the financial burden this ownership put on him, in early October 1939 the Trustees entered into an agreement with Woolman to accept conveyance of the property, and to assume the payments of the bond, mortgage,, and taxes, including payments past due. By the agreement Woolman was also to be reimbursed for monies he had already paid, the funds to come from the contributions made specifically for the project, on a proportional basis reflecting the ratio of Woolman's expenditures to the obligation assumed by the University. The agreement also provided that in the event of abandonment of the project and sale of the property before Woolman had been fully reimbursed, the proceeds from the sale were to be distributed in the same manner. At the same time, Woolman executed a quit-claim deed to his right to reclaim Cressbrook Farm, vesting in the University complete and absolute ownership of the two properties, free from any trusts or agreements with respect to the use of the properties by the University, With the entry of the United States into the second World War in December 1941, the whole project, of course, had to be put aside for the time being. During this period, the desirability of a unified University became more recognized. The advantages of having both the undergraduate and graduate schools — the arts, sciences, and humanities — together at the same campus, using the same facilities, libraries, laboratories, athletic facilities, dining and food services, and health services, were obvious, bearing out the preliminary findings of Dr. Kelly of a decade and a half earlier. After the war was over, in 1946, the University announced the launching of a new financial campaign to raise $32,000,000 to meet the "immediate and pressing needs of the University," a series of specific major capital projects on the West Philadelphia campus, many of which had been deferred "for the duration" during the war. To "concentrate the attention and interest of all alumni and friends of the University" on these projects and to channel to them contributions "which normally might be sought and received for the Valley Forge project," on October 14, 1946, the Trustees also resolved immediately to reimburse Woolman for the full balance of $61,208.53 still owed to him, an action also taken so that the "new direction" of the campaign "should not redound to the personal disadvantage of Mr. Woolman." While the Valley Forge project was not officially abandoned by this "new direction," the improvement and development of the West Philadelphia campus was given further impetus by a report two years later by the Trustees' Committee for the Physical Development of the University. The study was made by a sub-committee of six architects, all alumni, with Sydney E. Martin the chairman, to give "a vision of the Pennsylvania campus of the future." Basically, it envisioned the expansion of the campus to include all the area between 33d street and 40th street and from Walnut street to Hamilton Walk, with a central Mall along the line of Locust street. There was, it was reported, "reasonable assurance from the City Planning Commission that a number of streets within that area [including eventually Woodland Avenue, Locust, Pine and Chancellor streets, and many of the numbered cross streets]] could be removed from the City plan when the University acquires the surrounding properties." Further, it was also noted that the general area of the University had "been designated by the City as one for rehabilitation," and that the City therefore had "authority to acquire by condemnation any properties within the area and sell them to private parties [including the University] provided the use to which the land is to be put meets with the approval of the City." It was a plan that, with proper landscaping of the various open spaces, the Committee concluded "should do much to create a pleasant academic atmosphere in which we can all take pride." The report was approved by the Board of Trustees on October 23, 1946, and with its approval it became "the official future plan of the University." Ironically, it was the Valley Forge property that a few years later was threatened with "encroachment." The route proposed for the eastern extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike went through the Wilson Farm property; it would virtually cut the Valley Forge site in half. In January 1950, Harold E. Stassen, the president of the University, recommended to the Trustees that "the northern one-half (approximately 157 acres) of the property, which includes the portion through which the Turnpike will be built, be sold to the State for $162,213.60 or one-half of the total amount which the University had invested in the property," with the further provision that the State landscape the portion between the land retained by the University and the Turnpike and use it for "public and park purposes exclusively." He also recommended that $91,500 of the monies to be received from the sale be used to reimburse the general fund for expenditures that previously had been made relating to that portion of the property, with the balance set aside as a Valley Forge Fund. The recommendations were approved "in principle" by the Board of Trustees, but the offer apparently was not accepted by the Turnpike Commission, for in June 1952 the Trustees accepted $30,000 as settlement of the damage claims resulting from the construction of the Turnpike. Henry Woolman died on December 27, 1953, at the age of 78. Less than three months later the question of a possible sale of the Valley Forge property was again raised, but on March 17, 1954 the Executive Board of the Trustees agreed that it would be "inappropriate" to sell any part of the property at that time. And in June 1956, still another Committee on Valley Forge, comprised of Ralph Morgan, Gordon N. Hardwick Jr. and Sydney E. Martin, was appointed by the Trustees! At the same time, an appropriation of $30,000 was approved for the renovation of the properties. Three years later, however, the project officially came to an end. On May 22, 1959, almost thirty-three years after it was first proposed, the Trustees resolved "That the proposal to establish a College of Liberal Culture near Valley Forge is hereby abandoned." The action, paradoxically, was taken as a result of a bequest that had been made twenty years earlier for the establishment of such a college. "Under the Will of Rudolph P. Russell," the Trustees noted, "the University received a bequest which was to be used for the establishment of a College of Liberal Culture at Valley Forge or should the project be abandoned to pay the salary of a male teacher giving instruction to male students as might teach men to think abstractly and express themselves clearly." By May 1959 a balance in excess of $65,000 had accrued from the bequest. It was to apply this income to the alternate purpose specified that the "plan to establish a college near Valley Forge" was formally abandoned. And thus ended "the Valley Forge Ideal" — a "Utopian dream," perhaps, of a countryside College of Liberal Arts, a "distinct College affiliated with the University, perhaps to be known as Franklin College of the University of Pennsylvania," an opportunity for the University "to express ... in her campus and buildings, the priceless associations surrounding her origin and early history," with an emphasis on the traditional values. What a change, as Howard Okie observed, it would have brought about in the Great Valley of Tredyffrin Township! TopPostscript Faced with materially increasing operational costs, in May of 1969, the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees was authorized by the Trustees to consider sale of the property. In April 1972 about three-quarter's of an acre, along Wilson road, was sold to Tredyffrin Township for $8500, for use as the site of a pumping station in connection with the new municipal sewer system. The Cressbrook Farm property, with the DuPortail house, and a portion of the Wilson Farm, a little more than 269 acres altogether, were sold in March 1974 to Greenview Associates for $2,664,970. The Deed was executed on March 5, 1974, and the property is now a part of the Chesterbrook development of the Fox Companies, And, finally, the Lafayette quarters on the Wilson Farm, together with almost thirty-one acres of ground, was sold to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in September 1975 for $375,000, With the execution of the Deed on November 3, 1975, it became a part of Valley Forge Park. The cooperation of Harold Taubin, Robert G. Lorndale, and Mary Ellen Kaminsky, of the University of Pennsylvania, in finding and making available various records of the University was invaluable in the preparation of this article. Their assistance is much appreciated.
MAP OF THE UNIVERSITY CAMPUS AT VALLEY FORGE |
