Celebrating our sesquicentennial: Photos from the Penn State archives

Penn State's first formal master plan to guide campus development came about in 1907, when renowned New York landscape architect Charles Lowrie, commissioned by the Board of Trustees, overlaid the existing campus with a rectangular grid of streets and proposed grouping new buildings by academic discipline. The Lowrie Plan provided the foundation for later master plans that helped the University avoid haphazard growth and create one the most attractive and people-friendly academic settings in the nation. But even in the 19th century, thanks to the beautification work of William Waring and other pioneer faculty, the campus exhibited an idyllic quality.
View the photo from 1886 at http://www.sesquicentennial.psu.edu/pix/weeklypic.html and see if you don't agree.