Centre County Government

15. That Other Village—the New One

College Avenue in the 1930s: orderly and permanent, with town and gown respecting their places. CCHS Collections, donor Bob Gruver.

In 1856 the new Farm School was described to the world as lying "near Boalsburg." That solved one problem by introducing another: Where was Boalsburg? "Equally inaccessible from all points" very well described State College when Edwin Sparks coined the phrase 40 years later. In the borough's first year, a shopping trip to Bellefonte for clothes took a day. And thank goodness for Bellefonte! people felt at the time. Some still feel that way.

The place seemed immune to roads—Indian trails, turnpikes and iron furnace roads, even railroads. In 1892 the railroad relented and entered town—the iron-ore line, Bellefonte Central, which looped in from Bellefonte via Waddle. Other things were changing. Penn State began playing Bellefonte Academy at football in 1890. In 1897 Penn State won.

State College was still a fringe of houses along College Avenue in 1900. Students lived in Old Main. The college had built a boarding hotel in 1894 to house young members of its expanding faculty. When the University Inn burned in 1903, eight professors and their families were left homeless, dreaming of the big city. The housing crunch grew worse. By 1910 half the 1,662 students lived off campus, in apartments and fraternities. State College led the state in the proportion of new houses built—100 in 2 years—but was hardly keeping up. Students made College Avenue jump; faculty turnover was high.

Then came World War 1. Enrollment doubled again. In 1921 the borough built a block of small homes, identical, but rotated to appear varied, on Gill Street, for new faculty. Houses began springing up north of Park Avenue, and College Heights was born. Neighborhoods expanded with compact regularity south of College Avenue. Fraternities mushroomed and by 1930 housed more than 2,000 of the 4,500 students. Town apartments dropped. Both borough and school had developed well-defined boundaries by 1940. West Halls housed athletes, the new Old Main was finished, things had a permanent feel.

People alive today remember that permanent feel with nostalgia. Tended neightborhoods, placid streets, the slow rotation of seasons natural and academic. After World War II, returning veterans on the GI bill sent college enrollments skyrocketing. But temporary housing on campus kept the number of students in town apartments actually decreasing to 1950. Dormitory building kept pace with enrollments through the 60s. The golden age for village living with the frontiers of science right across the street went on and on.

1936 aerial view gives an idea of State College's compact neighborhoods surrounding a compact campus.

Two events changed all that. The university's decision in 1966 to stop building student housing sent floods of students into town for rooms. And a 1969 change in the law put an end to acquisitions of new township land by the borough. The effect of this squeeze on borough residents is still being felt; already by 1990 students outnumbered permanent residents by nearly three to one. And the Centre Region we know, with a metropolitan area population of 100,000—twice as many living outside the borough as in it—came into being, turning village neighborhoods into Happy Valley.

At this threshold of State College's second and the County's third century, the old adage is turned on its head. Suddenly State College is equally accessible from all directions, the chosen place where three national arteries, I-80, I-99, and US 322 intersect. Surrounded by beautiful farmlands and mountains, blessed with a matchless school system, linked by Internet and big box malls to national outlets, poised for unparalleled expansion, the Centre Region enters its new age with bated breath, almost afraid of its prosperity.