An Overview of the University of Pennsylvania’s Past
In the fall of 1749, Benjamin Franklin presented his concept for the “Publick Academy of Philadelphia” to the men and women of the city. He was keen to create a college to educate the next generation of Philadelphians. In a pamphlet titled Proposals for the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, he offered an innovative idea of higher education that taught both the decorative knowledge of the arts and the practical skills necessary to make a life. All four of the English colonial colleges at the time—Harvard, William & Mary, Yale, and Princeton—were founded as schools for training clergy, not to prepare their students for careers in business and public service. As always, he was full of energy and ambition for the Academy of Philadelphia, so he assembled a board of trustees and looked for the least expensive method to build a campus.
Despite a trustee’s offer of a prime building lot, Franklin focused on the property and unfinished “New Building” of evangelist George Whitefield. There, in 1740, a group of working-class Philadelphians decided to build both a philanthropic school for “the instruction of poor children” and the largest building in the city, a magnificent preaching hall. However, due to insufficient finance for the building and school, the plans for the chapel and school were shelved. Franklin seized the opportunity to quickly and cheaply establish his Academy in January 1751. In keeping with the objectives of the original “New Building” benefactors, he also founded a charity school.
As powerful and long-lasting an influence on Penn and the American University as did Benjamin Franklin himself was the hand-picked provost, Reverend William Smith. Another first for the Colonial Colleges, Smith designed a curriculum that gave students a solid foundation in the Classics as well as the more applied sciences. Smith was arrested for criticizing the policies of the popularly elected Provincial Assembly, but he was so dedicated to the school that he continued to teach classes from the Old City Jail!
In the midst of the American Revolution, Pennsylvania annexed the College of Philadelphia in 1779 because the revolutionary administration saw it as a Tory bastion. The institution of the State of Pennsylvania was founded when the state transformed the College into the nation’s first public institution. This university was formed with a more egalitarian purpose than had ever been imagined in the colonies, with members of the Board of Trustees representing every denomination and the only non-sectarian faculty in the young nation. The University of Pennsylvania became a private institution in 1791, when the early fervor of the Revolution faded, and it was then given its current name.
The eighteenth century was an amazing moment for the University and the young American Republic. The university’s medical faculty was founded by John Morgan in 1765, making it the first medical school in the colonies. James Wilson gave the first law lectures at Penn in 1790, marking the establishment of the federal government. By the time its fifty years were over, the University had trained the leaders of Pennsylvania as well as the new nation; among its alumni were nine signers of the Constitution and eleven of the Declaration of Independence. After the Continental Congress called College Hall home in 1778, the University moved to the President’s House on Ninth and Chestnut Streets in 1802.
After almost 150 years as a teaching institution, the University began to change with the times, even though at the end of the 19th century, a significant portion of its student body was still publicly performing Aristophanes’ plays. Penn undertook a remarkable transformation into a research university that generates information in addition to sharing it, spurred by the German model of higher education. Under the guidance of Provost Charles Janeway Stillé, Penn relocated its campus a second time in 1872, this time to the vast Almshouse estate west of the Schulykill River close to Philadelphia. Here, Spruce Street was lined with blocks of laboratories, and Franklin’s spirit of creation and discovery was revived by hiring a large number of researchers. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Penn was founded in 1882 with an emphasis on research and the advancement of knowledge under William Pepper’s provostship. In 1889, the first Ph.D. in Physics was awarded.
