Courtesy of Elizabeth and Mike, I was able to participate in a delightful weekend in the Philadelphia area recently. Their daughter Rachael is in her first year at Bryn Mawr; we were invited for Parents Weekend. Everything combined to make it a memorable trip.
Mike picked me up Friday morning and headed into Oakland where we added Beth to our entourage, after her class at Pitt. By midday we were well onto the Turnpike, passing through familiar terrain. My father served as Resident Engineer for the Turnpike Commission in 1938 and 1939, with responsibility for two contracts between New Stanton and Donegal. I fondly remember spending two days with him on the jobsite there when I was eight years old.
We stopped at the Sideling Hill Rest Area for a brief break. I immediately began to search for the plaque designating the Turnpike as a Civil Engineering Historic Landmark; in 1990 I was involved in nominating it for that honor. Sure enough, it was displayed prominently on an interior wall overlooking the dining area.
In recent years my trips on the Turnpike have been limited to the portion west of the Blue Mountain Interchange; it was a treat for me to travel the eastern part of it, a treat that begins when you exit Blue Mountain Tunnel and see the expanse of the Cumberland Valley stretching out ahead and to the South. It is indeed the entrance into a new world.
We checked into a Courtyard Marriot in King of Prussia, then drove to Bryn Mawr to meet Rachael. She has a very nice single room in an on-campus dorm. Mike asked me how it compared with my dorm room when I was a student – I replied that mine was half the size and that I shared it with a room-mate.
We then had a tour of the campus. The original architects for the college, Walter Cope and John Stewardson, developed a style called “Collegiate Gothic”, influenced significantly by Oxford and Cambridge. Following its introduction at Bryn Mawr, the style was popularized at Princeton and at Washington University in St. Louis. In addition, renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, famous for New York’s Central Park, was responsible for the layout of the campus’s 135 tree-covered acres. The campus ranks high on every “most beautiful campus” list.
Bryn Mawr was founded in 1885 by the Quakers as a “private women’s liberal arts college”, complementary to Haverford College, founded in 1833 and restricted initially to men. To ensure they had all the possibilities covered, the Quakers also founded Swarthmore in 1864, as a coeducational institution.
The three colleges form the Tri-College Consortium, a formal collaboration that permits students to cross-register at all three schools. Bryn Mawr and Haverford are about a mile and a half apart, with convenient shuttle bus service between the two campuses. They share a student newspaper and radio station. Swarthmore is about ten miles away, accessible by a van service.
Part of the special relationship between Bryn Mawr and Haverford is their joint music program. Rachael immediately qualified for a prestigious seat in the Haverford Orchestra as “Assistant Concert Mistress/Co-Principal Second” in the violin section, an impressive honor for an incoming Freshman. We enjoyed the Orchestra’s first concert of the year. They performed “Fanfare on Amazing Grace” by Adolphus Hailstork, one movement of Haydn’s “Drumroll Symphony”, and a movement from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet Suite”.
Not being a fan of institutional food services, I was less than enthusiastic when I learned we were going to dinner in one of the College’s two dining halls. My opinion changed dramatically once we arrived there. The environment was bright, clean, and cheerful, and the cuisine was several orders of magnitude better than I expected. How times have changed! When I was a Freshman at Clarion I would have starved to death had it not been for peanut butter sandwiches.
Saturday afternoon we visited Valley Forge National Historic Park, a first-time opportunity for me. Nearly everything about it was a pleasant surprise. The Park is large, 3500 acres, and immaculately maintained. We began in the Visitor Center by watching a nineteen-minute documentary produced by Peter Argentine, a neighbor of mine. I knew his firm produced documentaries; I was delighted at the excellence of this one.
During the winter of 1777/1778 Washington’s army built several thousand log houses; perhaps a dozen have been recreated and provide a fine example of the difficulties the soldiers faced that winter. Once the soldiers had built redoubts at key points and had removed all the trees, their position on high ground was very easy to defend. General Howe made the right decision keeping his troops in safe quarters in Philadelphia that winter.
Valley Creek runs along the western edge of the park. Seventy-five years after the encampment, the Knox Covered Bridge was constructed crossing it. Today a popular local landmark, it is a unique structure in many respects. The multiple kingpost trusses consist of six bays, each about eight feet long and twelve feet high. Two continuous timber arches, anchored four or five feet below the deck at each pier, sandwich each truss.
Many covered bridges are completely cladded; some have occasional small windows. The Knox Bridge has the cladding removed for a five-foot-wide strip running the entire length of both sides of the bridge. The good news is that this makes it possible for the bridge-hunter to see much of the truss and arch structure; the bad news is that this is contrary to the original purpose of the cladding – the protection of these components from the weather.
Sight-seeing on a lovely campus, a visit to a famous historical site, an enjoyable orchestra concert, and a signature covered bridge all added up to a memorable weekend. Best of all was seeing Rachael settling in nicely in a new and challenging environment.