Learning from Lewisburg
1. Campus and town |
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Start on campus, standing on the walk
at the east front of Roberts Hall — facing town and river: |
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East façade of Roberts Hall
(click on this, or any image, for a larger version) |
| Evolution of the university landscape |
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The University at Lewisburg — now
Bucknell — was started in 1846 as a Baptist college. Roberts
Hall, an austerely Baptist version of a Greek Revival building is
the second-oldest college building at Bucknell, dedicated in 1850. Originally
called Main Building and then “Old Main”, this plain building was
designed by Thomas Ustick Walter who also designed the exuberant present
dome on the U.S. Capitol. |
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Said to be the largest academic building in America
at its time, Roberts contained recitation rooms, a chapel, a library,
meeting rooms, and a Commencement Hall on the third floor, which was
the site of early commencements. The wings contained study rooms and
dormitories. You are standing on the east side which was once the
principal façade of the structure. This spot has been largely forgotten
as the campus has turned its focus away from town and river, and toward
US 15. |
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Romanesque pile that is Bucknell Hall |
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Lewisburg is nestled in the valley of the
Susquehanna River between several ridges. |
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Montour Ridge, seen from the upper campus;
an elongate upwarp of rock makes this ridge shaped like a breaching
whale. |
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Walk down three short sections of staircase and travel
left down the walkway to the bottom the hill: |
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At the bottom of the hill are "The
Gatreways", apartment-style student housing built in the late
1980s on the site of the 1880s football field -- spectators sat on
the now-brushy slope. The Gateways completed the reduction of this
area to the "back" of campus; it is ironic that they are
so named. The formal entrance to campus is now at the traffic light;
we move into the 21st Century. |
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Pause at the flagpole between the brownstone 1906 gateposts
and face down University Ave. You are now standing at the original
ceremonial entrance to campus; you are looking along the wide avenue
which led to "The Hill" as it was known. |
| The spatial relationship between the town and the university. |
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Note that University Ave. cuts diagonally toward campus
defying the rectilinear plan of most town streets (as the map of the
town can show you), and self-consciously connects the town to the
periphery and to the isolated academics who had taken residence on
the hill to the south of town. |
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Nineteenth Century presentation of the
University at Lewisburg as an academy perched on a hill at the edge
of town. |
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Today University Avenue is tree-lined
and unremarkable, with broken-up sight-lines; note by-passed brownstone
gate. |
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To your left, on the opposite corner, is the President's
House. It was built in 1855 by Rev. Justin R. Loomis, Professor of
Natural Sciences and President who bought a one-acre lot from the
Trustees for $ 400.00 and built the Gothic Revival house. In 1879,
the University bought the house and enlarged it for David J. Hill,
who was President from 1879 to 1888. It has been the home of Bucknell
presidents ever since. |
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President's house: Gothic Revival gem
originally straight out of an Andrew Jackson Downing plan book, ca.
1852, for "A Cottage in the English rural, or Gothic, Style" |
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Downing's Gothic plan brought the romance
of a Black Forest cottage to the urbanizing and industrializing eastern
US. |
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