Old Main | |
Location | 21st St. and Upland Ave., Upland, Pennsylvania |
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Coordinates | 39°51′21″N75°22′17″W / 39.85583°N 75.37139°W |
Area | 1 acre (0.40 ha) |
Built | 1857 |
Architectural style | Italianate |
NRHP reference No. | 73001626 [1] |
Added to NRHP | June 18, 1973 |
The Crozer Theological Seminary was a Baptist seminary located in Upland, Pennsylvania, and founded in 1868. It was named after the wealthy industrialist, John Price Crozer.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a student at Crozer Theological Seminary from 1948 to 1951, [2] being elected student body president [3] and graduating with a Bachelor of Divinity degree. [4]
In 1970, the seminary merged with the Rochester Theological Seminary, forming the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York and the seminary's Old Main building was subsequently used as office space by Crozer Hospital (now part of the Crozer-Chester Medical Center.) The Old Main building is a three-story, F-shaped, stucco-coated stone building with three pavilions connected by a corridor with flanking rooms. Each of the pavilions is topped by a gable roof and cupola, the largest cupola being on the central pavilion. [5] The seminary's grounds are now the Crozer Arboretum.
The Old Main building in Upland was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. [1]
The Seminary began as the Normal School of Upland, established and built by the president of the board of directors of the American Baptist Publication Society, John Price Crozer. [6] [7] After the outbreak of the American Civil War, the school was closed. [8]
Crozer allowed the Union army to use the building as a hospital during the Civil War. The hospital contained a thousand beds and accommodated 300 nurses, attendants and guards. The patients were almost exclusively Union soldiers except for after the battle of Gettysburg, in July 1863, when the number of wounded and sick Confederate army soldiers left on the battlefield required their acceptance at the hospital. During the war, more than 6,000 patients were treated. Many of the dead from the hospital were some of the first burials at nearby Chester Rural Cemetery. [9]
After the war, the building was repossessed by Crozer and subsequently sold to Colonel Theodore Hyatt for use as the Pennsylvania Military Academy until 1868. [10] [11]
Crozer died in 1866. When Old Main was vacated by the Pennsylvania Military Academy his family converted the school to the Crozer Theological Seminary in his honor. His son recruited faculty for the new mission, [12] It served as an American Baptist Church school, training seminarians for entry into the Baptist ministry from 1868 to 1970. [13] Henry G. Watson was named its first President in 1869.
In 1970 the school moved to Rochester, New York, in a merger that formed the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. [14] The old seminary building was used as the former Crozer Hospital (now the Crozer-Chester Medical Center). The building is currently used as administrative offices for the Crozer-Chester Medical Center.
Name | Tenure |
---|---|
Henry G. Weston | 1869–1909 |
Milton G. Evans | 1909–1934 |
James H. Franklin | 1934–1944 |
Edwin E. Aubrey | 1944–1949 |
Sankey Lee Blanton | 1950–1962 |
Ronald V. Wells | 1962–1970 |
The multi-acre campus contains the Crozer Arboretum and the following buildings:
Pearl Hall is a serpentine stone library on the campus which opened on June 4, 1871. [15] The building was sponsored by William Bucknell, the benefactor of Bucknell University, in memory of his late wife Margaret Crozer, the daughter of John Price Crozer. In addition to the $30,000 cost of the building, Bucknell also gave $25,000 for the cost of books and $10,000 for an endowment fund. [16]
Chester is a city in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located in the Philadelphia metropolitan area on the western bank of the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware. The population of Chester was 32,605 at the 2020 census.
Upland is a borough in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. Upland is governed by an elected seven-member borough council. The population was 3,239 at the 2010 census, up from 2,974 at the 2000 census.
The American Baptist Churches USA (ABCUSA) is a Baptist Christian denomination established in 1907 as the Northern Baptist Convention, and named the American Baptist Convention from 1950 to 1972. It traces its history to the First Baptist Church in America (1638) and the Baptist congregational associations which organized the Triennial Convention in 1814.
Alberta Christine Williams King was an American civil rights organizer best known as the wife of Martin Luther King Sr., and as the mother of Martin Luther King Jr. She was the choir director of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. She was shot and killed in the church by 23-year-old Marcus Wayne Chenault six years after the assassination of her eldest son Martin Luther King Jr.
Henry Clay Vedder was an American Baptist church historian, seminary professor, editor and theologian. Vedder authored numerous articles and twenty-seven books on church history and theology.
William Augustus Jones Jr. was an African-American Minister and Civil Rights leader.
Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School is a Baptist seminary in Rochester, New York. It is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA.
Augustus Hopkins Strong was a Baptist minister and theologian who lived in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His most influential book, Systematic Theology, proved to be a mainstay of Baptist theological education.
Samuel DeWitt Proctor was an American minister, educator, and humanitarian. An African-American church and higher education leader, he was active in the Civil Rights Movement and is perhaps best known as a mentor and friend of Martin Luther King Jr.
William Robert Bucknell was an American real estate investor, businessman, philanthropist, and benefactor to Bucknell University, for whom the university is named.
The American Baptist Historical Society (ABHS) is the oldest Baptist historical society in the United States.
Crozer Health is a four-hospital health system based in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and serving Delaware County; northern Delaware and parts of western New Jersey.
Chester Rural Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery founded in March 1863 in Chester, Pennsylvania. Some of the first burials were Civil War soldiers, both Union and Confederate, who died at the government hospital located at the nearby building which became the Crozer Theological Seminary.
Delaware County National Bank is a historic bank building in Chester, Pennsylvania, located at the southwest corner of 3rd Street and Avenue of the States adjacent to the Old St. Paul's Church burial ground. It was built between 1882 and 1884, and is a 2+1⁄2-story masonry building in the Renaissance Revival style. It is built of brick and brownstone and has a low hipped slate-covered roof. The roof features metal cresting, five projecting decorated chimneys, and four Corinthian order pilasters supporting the front pediment dormer. It was headquarters for the Delaware County National Bank from 1884 to 1930.
John Price Crozer was an American textile manufacturer, banker, president of the board of directors of the American Baptist Publication Society, and philanthropist from Pennsylvania. His mills produced clothing for the US Army and other customers.
Upland Baptist Church is a Baptist church built in 1851 in Upland, Pennsylvania.
Calvary Baptist Church is a Baptist Church founded in 1879 in Chester, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is affiliated with the Progressive National Baptist Convention, and the American Baptist Churches, USA.
Josephus Pius Barbour was an American Baptist pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Chester, Pennsylvania who served as an executive director of the National Baptist Association and editor of the National Baptist Voice publication. He was the first African American to graduate from Crozer Theological Seminary in 1937, and later mentored a teenaged Martin Luther King Jr., when King was a student there.
Thomas Jefferson Clayton was an American lawyer from Pennsylvania who served as the first elected President Judge of the Thirty-Second Judicial District of Pennsylvania from 1874 to 1900. Clayton was an author of several letters to the Delaware County Republican newspaper based on his travels throughout Europe, Asia and Africa which were turned into a book.
The J. Lewis Crozer Library is a public library in Chester, Pennsylvania, United States. It was founded in 1769 as one of the earliest libraries established in Pennsylvania. It was chartered as the Chester Library Company in 1830 and reincorporated in 1879 as the Chester Free Library. In 1925, the library was renamed in recognition of a $250,000 gift bequeathed to it by the wealthy philanthropist J. Lewis Crozer. The library occupied several buildings over the years, including the Deshong Art Museum from 1961 to 1978. The current library building was built in 1976 as a neighborhood branch and became the main library in 1978.