PROLOGUE: 1855 - 1900

In 1855, Penn State was founded as The Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania in what would later, in 1896, become the Borough of State College. In 1874, the institution was renamed The Pennsylvania State College, when the state appropriated to it the income from the proceeds of the Morrell Act's national land grants, thus becoming, along with Michigan State University, one of the first two Land Grant institutions in the United States.

College buildings on campus prior to 1900 were Main Building [later, Old Main], Mechanical Arts [later the initial Main Engineering Building], Botanical Laboratory [later, Old Botany and presently the oldest campus building], Chemistry and Physics Building [later Walker Laboratory across Pollock Road from McAllister Hall], Armory, Ladies Cottage, Schwab Auditorium, Agricultural Experiment Station [next to present-day Armsby Building], and Track House [adjacent to the original Beaver Field, which was behind present-day Davey and Osmond Laboratories (site of the earlier red-brick Walker Laboratory) and across Pollock Road from the present-day McAllister Building.]

At one time, freshman students were required to promise not to join any secret fraternity, but Greek life came to Penn State in 1872 when Delta Tau Delta was formed. However, that chapter ran into much faculty opposition, including Penn State President Calder's opinion that fraternities were "corrupting and mischievous," and it was forced to disband after a short time.

Fraternities eventually came to stay, when President George Washington Atherton, after taking office in 1882, finally changed his mind about fraternities, believing they had matured. Urged by students to convince the trustees to lift their ban, he replied, "Young men, I have found that the best time to set a hen is when the hen wants to be set." Nevertheless, the trustees also recognized a pragmatic solution to Penn State's need for both additional housing and additional social facilities, and approved Atherton's January1888 recommendation that Phi Gamma Delta be permitted to charter a fifteen-member chapter. This was then followed by Beta Theta Pi in the same year, QTV [a secret Latin-letter society, which later became Phi Kappa Sigma] in 1890, Sigma Chi, Kappa Sigma, and Sigma Alpha Epsilon in 1892, and Phi Sigma Kappa in 1899.

In 1899, Phi Gamma Delta members resided in a large, frame house at the corner of Allen Street and Beaver Avenue, with a tennis court in the rear and a magnificent viewpoint for the then-small Penn State campus from the front porch.
[Note: In the 1930s, the Phi Gamma Delta structure was moved to the rear of the property nearest to Highland Avenue (now Alley) and rotated 90? to face Allen Street instead of Beaver Avenue. It was faced with stone and continues to be occupied in 2004. The relocation was done to permit construction of a new commercial building by Harold Griffith, Sr., whose sons Harold "Sonny" Griffith, Jr. '45 (Bond #421) and John Griffith '50 (Bond #501) would later become Phis at PA Theta. From the late 1940s to the turn of the next century, the Griffith Building was home to "Kaye's Korner," State College's first convenience store.]

A reestablished Delta Tau Delta chapter occupied a house directly across Allen Street from Phi Gamma Delta [later, the second location for the State College Post Office and an even later site of Schlow Memorial Library]. From the combination of the fraternity's initials, its downtown location, and its members' reputations, brothers of "DTD" acquired the nickname "DownTown Drunks."

Beta Theta Pi had built its first chapter house in 1888 "almost out of town" in the 300 block of East College Avenue. In 1895, they constructed their second home – a stately, elegant, Victorian structure – on campus [between the south end of present-day Deike Building and just north of Mechanical Engineering Building].

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