Since it opened in 2001, the Hintz Family Alumni Center has served as a campus home for all Penn State alumni. Built next to, and designed to complement, the historic University House, the center was brought to fruition by Penn Staters who respected the university’s history and shared a vision for a contemporary design that at once honored tradition and embraced the future.
A HOME FOR ONE AND ALL: For 25 years, the Hintz Family Alumni Center has welcomed Penn State alums, their families, friends, and visitors from all over the world to University Park.
Whenever Penn State trustee emerita Anne Riley ’64, ’75 MA Lib walks into the Hintz Family Alumni Center, she feels as welcome as she did the very first time she entered the building that, she says, was designed to be “a special place on campus” for Penn State alumni and their friends and families from across the globe.
Riley—whose father, Ridge Riley ’32 Lib, served as executive director of the Alumni Association from 1947 to 1970—was on the Alumni Council committee that worked with university administration and Alumni Association staff to plan for the building, which was approved in 1997 and funded largely by a generous gift from former Board of Trustees chair Edward R. Hintz ’59 Bus and his wife, Helen ’60 H&HD. The steering committee, with Diane Ryan, executive director of the Alumni Association at the time, scouted several alumni centers in the U.S. for design inspiration to share with Philadelphia architects Linda O’Gwynn ’76 A&A and Tom Purdy ’83 A&A of Purdy O’Gwynn Meyers.
Today, the lush Alumni Gardens contain the brick tiles of Alumni Walk and an enhanced pond and bridge, a feature that was part of the landscaping when President George Atherton occupied what is now referred to as University House. The center speaks to the university’s rich history, and stands ready to welcome future generations of alumni.
From the beginning, there was no doubt that University House, home to university presidents until 1970, would underpin the Hintz Family Alumni Center. “No new construction would be built that was higher than that original building,” says Riley, and “the features of the original president’s house would be considered in the new design.” For example, the Georgian columns of the portico were echoed in rounder columns of the new colonnade.
Anne Riley and Diane Ryan visited the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to view the work of William Morris and the early-20th century Arts and Crafts movement he favored—inspiration that had been included in the proposals for Hintz. Later, architects Tom Purdy and Linda O’Gwynn took time to visit the dining hall at Trinity Hall, Cambridge; its exposed beams, musicians’ balcony, and medieval design touches inspired similar features in Robb Hall (bottom).
Hardly a day passes without some kind of event taking place at the Hintz Family Alumni Center: a college function, a student gathering hosted by the Lion Ambassadors or the Blue and White Society (both of which call the alumni center home), or the annual Homecoming ice cream social, at which the Alumni Blue Band (bottom) is a much-loved fixture. Hintz also offers a picture-perfect setting for newly minted graduates en route to exciting new lives—and for these future alumni, the extensive collection of La Vie yearbooks in Robb Hall is one of many links to the past, to be perused on a quieter day from the cozy confines of a deep armchair.
At signature events such as Homecoming, returning alumni and their families mix and mingle with students and fellow Penn Staters from across generations. The alumni center also provides a hub for memorable gatherings such as We Are Weekend, Black Alumni Reunion, and since last fall, a home Roar Tour event the night before the White Out football game. In recent years, it has also hosted “Hintzpiration,” a collaboration with the College of Arts and Architecture and the annual Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts that showcases vintage Arts Fest posters and provides a welcome respite for alumni dodging the midsummer heat.
