00:08 - Hi, I'm Carson Devitt, and today

00:10 - we're here at Shippensburg University to explore some of its history.

00:13 - It was originally founded

00:14 - in 1871 as the Cumberland Valley State Normal School for teachers.

00:18 - Let's go ahead and take a look at some of the campus.

00:34 - Content.

00:34 - I'm here with Stephen Berger, professor of history here

00:36 - at Shippensburg University, and we're outside of Old Main.

00:39 - This is essentially the most historic building on campus.

00:42 - Tell us, why is that?

00:43 - Absolutely. Well, welcome to Shippensburg.

00:46 - This building here, Old Main, is the, original building.

00:50 - When the the university started, in the 1870s,

00:54 - this was the entire university.

00:57 - In the 19th century, when, Pennsylvania

01:01 - created, public schools, they needed public school teachers.

01:05 - And so the legislature passed a law

01:08 - saying that there would be 13 districts across the state, each of which would have

01:12 - a normal school to train teachers to teach in those public schools.

01:17 - Shippensburg was competing with other local communities.

01:20 - But then eventually James Wickersham, who is the Pennsylvania.

01:24 - Secretary of Education, came to town and said that Shippensburg

01:28 - would be the ideal place for this region's normal school.

01:31 - The local residents took up the challenge and began raising money.

01:36 - They actually sold stock to pay for the construction of the building.

01:40 - They raised over $250,000.

01:43 - And eventually, in 1871, broke ground for this new building.

01:49 - So tell us what was inside of Old Main.

01:51 - Whenever it was officially built?

01:53 - Okay, so Old Main was the entire campus.

01:57 - So you had the classrooms.

01:58 - You had the library, you had, on the second floor is the memorial chapel

02:04 - where students were required to attend services every week.

02:08 - You had the dining hall.

02:10 - And one of the things that's really interesting is

02:12 - you also had a model school.

02:14 - So there were actually schoolchildren who lived on campus in this building.

02:19 - Who would attend that school so that the students, teachers

02:22 - could get practice teaching.

02:37 - So now we're inside of the chapel.

02:39 - Inside of Old Main.

02:40 - Was this original two old main?

02:41 - Yeah. This is part of the original building.

02:45 - As I mentioned, students lived here.

02:47 - Faculty lived here.

02:49 - And part of the routine was students were also would come here

02:53 - for religious services.

02:54 - This also was a place where they would, have lectures and public events as well.

02:58 - Were they required to come here? Yeah.

03:00 - So one of the things that was important

03:02 - was that the folks who established the Cumberland.

03:05 - Valley State Normal School wanted teachers to have high moral standing,

03:09 - and so attending religious services was one of the requirements

03:13 - they had to come on.

03:15 - Sunday mornings, there was also services on Wednesdays.

03:18 - This was a very structured environment.

03:20 - Everyone got up at a certain time.

03:22 - They had to attend classes a certain time, have study hours at a certain time,

03:26 - and they were also required to take one bath a week.

03:29 - So the university started out with one building in Old Main,

03:32 - and eventually they began to outgrow that.

03:34 - How did what do they go from there?

03:35 - Yeah.

03:36 - So it's really interesting.

03:37 - Shippensburg, when it starts in 1873, has one building.

03:40 - That's enough for everyone.

03:42 - The universe does struggle a little bit in its first 20 years.

03:46 - But by the 1890s, the university is on solid foundation.

03:50 - It's starting to grow, attract more students,

03:53 - and suddenly they need more space.

03:55 - And so they decide that they're going to build, two new buildings,

03:59 - one of which is the women's dormitory, which is now called Horton Hall.

04:03 - The other, which is the gymnasium, which is today Stewart Hall.

04:06 - Where are we in relation to Horton Hall, then?

04:09 - So we are actually on the bridge to Horton Hall

04:12 - when they construct this new women's, residence hall.

04:15 - One of the things that they do is they also include this bridge,

04:19 - which goes from the second floor of Horton Hall to the second floor of Old Main.

04:23 - This in part helps to keep the women from mixing with the male students.

04:28 - And also makes it nicer.

04:29 - They don't have to go out in the the snow or rain when the weather's not very nice.

04:34 - So this is the bridge to Horton Hall,

04:37 - and this area over here is,

04:39 - actually a 1930s New Deal public works project.

04:44 - The university, as it was, planning to to grow, did not have a space

04:50 - where all of the students could get together at one time.

04:52 - So this area was actually turned into a natural amphitheater

04:57 - where there were benches.

04:58 - And then where the little red schoolhouse is today was actually a stage.

05:03 - And after World War Two and Memorial Auditorium was built,

05:06 - this area stopped being used.

05:08 - So it became the perfect location when they decided to move the little Red

05:12 - schoolhouse to campus.

05:29 - I'm here with Alan Dietrich Ward.

05:30 - He's professor of history here at Shippensburg University,

05:33 - and we're outside the little Red schoolhouse.

05:34 - Tell us, what's the history behind that?

05:36 - Carson, we are so excited to welcome you all here today to Shippensburg University.

05:40 - And the little red schoolhouse.

05:41 - The little red schoolhouse

05:43 - was originally called the Potato Point or Mount Jackson School.

05:46 - It was located about five miles from here in Newburg, Pennsylvania,

05:50 - and it was brought here by our alumni in order to celebrate

05:53 - 100 years of partnership between the local community

05:58 - and what was then Cumberland Valley State Normal School.

06:00 - Normal being a teacher training school, of course.

06:03 - Let's take a look inside.

06:05 - So the school was originally built in 1865,

06:08 - and it was in operation until 1953.

06:11 - In 1969 it was re assembled

06:15 - a brick by brick here on Shippensburg University campus.

06:19 - And we have today a wonderful opportunity to be able

06:23 - to give the experience of what it was like to learn in a one room schoolhouse to,

06:29 - our students, today to to young folks from the community who visit.

06:33 - There are a couple of things

06:34 - in the little red schoolhouse that we're particularly proud of.

06:37 - One of them is our collection of a thousand

06:41 - textbooks dating all the way back to the 1820s

06:44 - through the 1950s, and covering subjects, you know,

06:47 - from math to English, to,

06:50 - to astronomy, to history, and really giving a sense of what it was

06:55 - like to study during that time period in which the school was in operation.

06:59 - The little Red schoolhouse has a really strong connection to our local community.

07:03 - There are still folks alive who went to school in this very building

07:07 - when it was, a few miles away from here in Newburgh.

07:11 - And we have a list of all of the teachers who taught in here

07:14 - in that period between 1865 and 1953,

07:18 - and that strong connection to community continues over other generations.

07:22 - Just last year, we had a group of schoolkids

07:24 - in from the local community and in the middle of a one little boy,

07:28 - pointed, to the sign and said, that's my great grandfather, right.

07:33 - So the schoolhouse is a balance today of kind of modern amenities,

07:39 - heating, cooling, climate control to keep things comfortable here

07:42 - and to keep our artifacts in good shape,

07:45 - but also to really demonstrate kind of as accurately as possible,

07:49 - what the school would have looked like during the periods, in it was operation.

07:54 - Of course, no schoolhouse can be complete without its authentic, teacher's desk.

07:59 - This is the very desk that would have been used by those generations of teachers

08:03 - to lead their students in recitation, to instruct.

08:06 - On the blackboard and, of course, to oversee the older

08:09 - students who then in turn taught the younger students.

08:13 - So this is the original township

08:14 - ledger from the 1870s when the school was in operation.

08:18 - We can see receipts here from, local residents

08:22 - who were required to, make contributions to support the school.

08:26 - Oftentimes, those contributions were in-kind.

08:29 - You know, in the form of food for the teacher or lodging for the teacher

08:32 - or coal.

08:33 - We even have, a number of different invoices

08:36 - for purchasing textbooks, for the schoolhouse,

08:39 - from the railroads that are all here in this historic ledger.

08:43 - One of the other elements of the school that we are really proud of

08:46 - is an original, more than 125 year old organ from York, Pennsylvania,

08:51 - that was used in the schoolhouse

08:53 - and donated by one of the last teachers in the school by her daughters.

08:58 - It completely is still playable today.

09:01 - And you can see from our selection of, songbooks

09:05 - that we still have the opportunity, to be able to do performances

09:09 - that demonstrate the kinds of activities that students would have done here

09:13 - when the school was in operation.

09:15 - So, of course, in one of the traditions we have here at the little Red schoolhouse

09:18 - is for visitors coming to the little Red schoolhouse for their very first time.

09:22 - They get to be the ones who call students back, like students

09:26 - would have been called every morning and at lunchtime into the schoolhouse.

09:29 - And of course, that's the rain, the schoolhouse bell.

09:31 - So go ahead and give the rope a pole.

09:37 - Congratulations.

09:38 - You are now officially a little red schoolhouse student.

09:40 - Awesome.

09:57 - Now we're at Gilbert Hall, which is the multicultural Student Affairs building.

10:01 - But it wasn't always used for that, right? No.

10:04 - So this building was part of the that growth.

10:07 - It started in the 1890s.

10:10 - Also encompass some change

10:12 - that was taking place on campus, in the early 20th century.

10:16 - Students were no longer simply teaching in one room schoolhouses,

10:21 - but were teaching in more modern, more complicated schools.

10:24 - And so Shippensburg, in the early 20th century

10:27 - constructed this building, which was the laboratory school.

10:31 - It was based on some of the theories of the educator John Dewey.

10:35 - And was really meant to give them more of a kind of experience

10:38 - they'd get in a small town or a small city

10:41 - with multiple classes operating at the same time.

10:45 - So this was the lab school,

10:47 - up until the late 1930s, when the roll in school opened,

10:51 - which was the second or the third model school on campus.

10:55 - When that happened, this became the business school,

10:57 - and it's actually named after, President Gilbert, who was a World.

11:01 - War Two veteran, who served in the years just after World War two.

11:07 - Eventually, the

11:07 - students and Gilbert Hall outgrew it, and they had to build a third lab school.

11:11 - So they built Rolling Hall.

11:13 - And this is where students would come to learn about how to teach

11:16 - and gain that valuable experience on campus.

11:19 - And the exterior is actually designed to

11:21 - look just like a little red schoolhouse, like the one we saw earlier.

11:24 - Okay.

11:25 - And then this is one of the other oldest buildings on campus.

11:29 - This was Stewart Hall.

11:30 - It was built as the school's first gymnasium.

11:35 - So this was constructed in 1894.

11:39 - It's in Richardson Romanesque.

11:40 - So it's a really pretty building.

11:43 - It served as the school's gymnasium

11:45 - with a basketball court inside an elevated running track.

11:49 - It had hot running water, which was an exciting thing in the 1890s.

11:54 - It continued to be the school's gymnasium

11:57 - until the Alumni gymnasium was built in the 1830s.

12:01 - During the Great Depression, some faculty

12:04 - who were, unemployed actually lived in this building.

12:08 - After World War Two, it became a residence hall.

12:11 - There was a surge of students coming to the university on the GI Bill,

12:15 - and so they actually put bunks in here for former, World.

12:19 - War Two veterans to stay in here while they were attending the university.

12:23 - And then it became this, school student union.

12:28 - Through the 1950s and 1960s,

12:31 - a lot of students, came here for dances, for parties.

12:35 - There was a lounge for commuter students in the basement.

12:38 - And then in the 1970s, it became the,

12:43 - home of the campus communication journalism department.

12:47 - Finally, the the last use of the building

12:51 - was as the little princess Playhouse.

12:54 - One of the campus theater professors used this for children's theater.

12:58 - And then in the last few years, there was a major effort to renovate it.

13:02 - And now it's a beautiful space where we do the admissions programs

13:05 - and other campus events.

13:07 - I hope you enjoyed our tour of Shippensburg University's history.

13:10 - I'm Carson, love it. Thank you for watching.