00:25 - Today, President Ron Paul will be telling us

00:27 - about the history of Allegheny College, and it's over 200 years old.

00:31 - Tell us about its founding.

00:32 - Thanks, Carson.

00:33 - Welcome to Allegheny College.

00:35 - We are celebrating 211 years of academic excellence.

00:39 - We were founded right here in the beautiful town of Meadville, Pennsylvania,

00:44 - in 1815 to provide access

00:47 - to high quality education to the people of Meadville.

00:51 - Much like what was found in the education of then New England states,

00:55 - but right here in the frontier of what was in the frontier of America.

01:00 - And while we've grown to be a national liberal arts college,

01:04 - we're deeply proud of our commitment to our roots in our community,

01:09 - to continue to provide access to that education right here.

01:13 - Before we go inside historic Bentley Hall.

01:15 - Take a look at the grand sycamore tree.

01:19 - Legend has it that this sycamore tree was planted

01:23 - by Alleghany's founding president, Timothy

01:25 - Alden himself in 1822.

01:28 - And, according to the classical legend, a tree of this nature planted

01:34 - on the southeast corner of a building brings prosperity to all those inside.

01:38 - And so you bet that we're keeping an eye on our grand sycamore tree.

01:43 - Hey, come on in, and let's check out historic Bentley Hall.

01:47 - OOP. Before we head in, though,

01:49 - in 1824, as part of Alleghany's history.

01:53 - Right here on these steps.

01:55 - The Revolutionary War hero,

01:58 - French general Marquis de Lafayette,

02:00 - addressed the Allegheny College and Meadville communities on his journey

02:04 - through the then very young United States of America.

02:08 - Come on in.

02:10 - So here we are inside of historic Bentley Hall.

02:13 - Before we check out Bentley, I want to point out our campus newspaper,

02:18 - the celebrating 150 years of continuous publication.

02:24 - The campus is an award winning, student run newspaper

02:28 - that preceded the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

02:31 - I'm deeply proud to have such a paper written by

02:36 - and for our students.

03:06 - And let's walk down the east wing of Bentley Hall.

03:09 - Bentley Hall was the first building on Allegheny College's campus.

03:14 - It was completed in the 1820s, and it's where the president lived

03:18 - and the faculty lived where classes were taught.

03:21 - And it held Allegheny College's library collection in fact,

03:25 - we have a letter from Thomas Jefferson

03:27 - to then President Timothy all did,

03:31 - in which Jefferson commands Allegheny

03:34 - College on our library collection, writing that he didn't think

03:38 - such a collection existed in the United States.

03:41 - And here's another notable member of the Allegheny College community.

03:45 - William McKinley attended Allegheny College

03:48 - before he went on to be our nation's presidents.

03:52 - Another notable alumni is

03:55 - Ida Tarbell, class of 1880.

03:58 - Ida Torah Bill graduated from Allegheny College, went on to be an elementary

04:03 - education teacher, and then moved into investigative

04:07 - journalism and was the first woman to break ground in that important field.

04:13 - And during the renovation of Bentley Hall, we decided to leave

04:16 - windows to the past, showing what the interior of the walls look like.

04:20 - The Bentley, instead of having evenly spaced two by fours and drywall,

04:24 - you have plaster walls with wooden timbers and brick

04:28 - inside, which gave some interesting challenges to our contractors.

04:45 - And so this is the

04:46 - original office of Timothy Halden, our founding president.

04:50 - The fireplace is the original fireplace that was here with Timothy.

04:54 - And on the wall

04:56 - is a really interesting Allegheny, memorabilia.

05:01 - It's the flag that flew on the boat.

05:04 - Captained by Raymond P Schaefer, Allegheny class of 1938,

05:10 - who would go on to be governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

05:14 - and served as president at Allegheny for a year.

05:18 - We're proud of our history of Allegheny.

05:20 - And, here's a copy of the college catalog

05:24 - from 1823.

05:41 - It's around.

05:42 - You brought us up to the second floor of Bentley Hall.

05:44 - What's so significant about this window sill?

05:47 - But this is really special.

05:49 - So during the renovations of Bentley Hall, we wanted to preserve

05:53 - the historic beauty of the building.

05:56 - And while it's covered with snow at this time of year,

05:59 - during the spring and summer and fall,

06:02 - you would see inscriptions on our window sills all around Bentley from students

06:08 - over time, putting their names, their initials and their dates,

06:12 - which they were at Allegheny.

06:14 - And so it's, again, a window into the past, celebrating Alleghany's rich history.

06:23 - And now we're heading

06:24 - into the attic of Bentley Hall

06:28 - with access to the bell tower.

06:30 - Now, legend has it that president McKinley,

06:34 - when he was a student at Allegheny, brought a castle up to the bell tower.

06:39 - We can't confirm that.

06:40 - But the namesake of or more of our dining facilities.

06:43 - McKinley's.

06:44 - Their emblem is the cow.

07:04 - So we spent a lot of time

07:05 - talking about Bentley Hall, and now we're standing outside of Rice Hall.

07:08 - What's the history behind this?

07:10 - So Rice Hall, as I said earlier, completed in 1902,

07:13 - was the first freestanding library for Allegheny.

07:16 - It housed the Lincoln Collection and the Jefferson Collection.

07:21 - The Jefferson collection, was in

07:24 - one side of rice, all the Lincoln collection and the other side.

07:27 - And the Lincoln Collection was donated

07:30 - by alumna Ida Tarbell, our investigative journalist.

07:55 - All right.

07:55 - Although it's a little loud inside here, do the construction.

07:58 - Tell us what is this going to look like once it's done?

08:01 - Carson, we are celebrating the historic beauty of Rice Hall

08:05 - and bringing it up to the 21st century.

08:08 - Rice Hall is now the home of the Phil Saint Rich center for innovation,

08:13 - Oral health, the Allegheny Lab for Innovation and Creativity.

08:18 - It'll house the computer science department in the English department,

08:21 - and a center for interdisciplinary work

08:24 - that's going to bring the liberal arts

08:27 - to emerging technologies.

08:45 - This is Allegheny College's

08:47 - Vukovich Center, which is where they host a bunch of theater programs.

08:50 - Let's head inside and meet the theater professor.

09:10 - Hi, I'm Mark Costin,

09:11 - and I'm a professor of theater here at Allegheny College.

09:15 - Today we're in the Vukovich Center for Communication Arts.

09:19 - Really wonderful performance space, the Gladys Mullinax Black Theater.

09:24 - This space opened in the spring of 2009,

09:29 - and is a perfect place for Allegheny students to work creatively,

09:33 - collaboratively, and to create the absolute best

09:37 - theatrical productions that a liberal arts college

09:41 - like Allegheny can possibly do.

09:44 - This space also is home to a really extraordinary scene

09:49 - shop, costume shop, television studio,

09:53 - as well as prop storage too.

09:56 - In March, I'm going to direct

10:00 - David Osmond's very contemporary work, Marie-Antoinette.

10:04 - Ajami is a playwright and a Tony winner,

10:07 - and it's pretty typical of what this program attempts to do in terms

10:13 - of introducing our students in our audiences to the absolute

10:17 - best contemporary works, contemporary musicals,

10:21 - while also consistently thinking, what are the stories?

10:24 - What are the voices that are highly educated?

10:27 - Students in surrounding community absolutely

10:30 - need to be introduced to?

10:34 - I'm getting ready to walk us down to the scene shop.

10:38 - Let's go take a look at some of the work that my collaborators

10:41 - in the department of Theater are working.

10:55 - Hi, welcome to the costume shop here at Allegheny College.

10:58 - The custom shop here serves, the place up theater here on campus.

11:03 - I'm fully staffed by students, work study students.

11:07 - So if you come and work at the Allegheny College, you can work in this costume shop

11:11 - where we'll teach you about costume, craft, hair and makeup

11:14 - and any other costume, specialty constructions.

11:18 - So feel free to shop in.

11:33 - We're here in the Play Shop

11:34 - theater scene shop, where our students are introduced

11:37 - to constructing and building and thinking collaboratively

11:42 - about making all of our Play Shop productions come to life,

11:47 - including these delectable orders

11:51 - for Marie-Antoinette.

12:01 - Allegheny

12:01 - College has a rich history in theater.

12:05 - The first production goes back to 1879,

12:08 - and by the turn of the century, in 1908,

12:11 - we have the emergence of the first men's theater club called Doozer Do,

12:17 - and two years later, the women of the campus

12:19 - also formed their own drama club called Cleo Cleat But by the 1920s,

12:25 - both drama clubs had merged together, and by 1929 1930,

12:31 - you see the emergence of what we now know as the Play Shop theater.

13:00 - We're now standing in the David Wise Fitness Center, and as you can tell

13:04 - by all of these displays behind us, there's a lot of athletic history here.

13:07 - Tell us a little bit about it.

13:09 - So the Y center is home to the athletics department of Allegheny College.

13:14 - The athletics department at Allegheny goes

13:17 - all the way back, really, to the 19th century.

13:21 - The different names of this, teams over the years,

13:24 - we've been called the Hilltoppers, the Methodists, the Blue and gold.

13:29 - And today we're called the Gators.

13:31 - In 1905, alleghany's President William Crawford,

13:34 - met in New York City with several other colleges

13:37 - to sort of think about the dangers of collegiate football.

13:40 - Those meetings then eventually led, in 1906 to the founding of the NCAA.

13:45 - So Allegheny College is proud to be part one of the original members of the NCAA.

13:51 - The the history of Allegheny sports.

13:54 - And as far as men's and women's sports, goes back to all the way back to 1867.

14:00 - And you can see this case here in the distance.

14:02 - We've got, the baseball, case here in the Hall of Fame.

14:08 - 1867 was the first recorded game between

14:11 - Allegheny College and a team from Meadville, Pennsylvania.

14:15 - Nearby Meadville.

14:16 - And you can see some of the different artifacts

14:18 - and materials that we have on display.

14:20 - And then as far as women's sports go, we can,

14:23 - take a quick look at the women's basketball case.

14:27 - Women's basketball.

14:29 - The first recorded game goes back to 1899,

14:32 - and we've had over 100 years of women's athletics.

14:36 - Most recently, we now have a, flag football team as part of our varsity sports.

14:42 - Thank you so much for joining Allegheny College.

14:45 - I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about its history.