The print was a graduation gift from a friend who knew that Johanna Ramos ’92, ’99 MEng Eng had loved it ever since she’d seen it hanging in the window of the Old Main Frame Shop on College Avenue. The image, painted in 1910 by the landscape artist Richard Rummell and titled simply The Pennsylvania State College, offers a bird’s-eye view of what would become the University Park campus. Ramos, a Lion Ambassador during her undergraduate days, says she was drawn to it because “I was just in love with the history of the university.”

Hints of today’s campus vie with the ghosts of its past. A horse-drawn carriage shares space with an early automobile on College Avenue. The Armory and Engineering Building, both long gone, dominate Allen Street as it extends north from downtown. The original Old Main looms, barely recognizable in red. University House, then home to the college president and now part of the Hintz Family Alumni Center, sits nestled in the trees.

At a time when the university’s continued evolution is front of mind for many of us, this scene from more than a century ago is a reminder that, here as everywhere, change remains constant. A chance to appreciate our history, it’s also an opportunity to put the present in perspective. “It’s familiar but not familiar,” Ramos says. “And it’s just a beautiful print.”

It was precisely because of her affection for the image that Ramos, an aerospace engineer and a longtime member of our Alumni Council, kept it rolled up in its protective tube; through various moves, she’d never found the right space to display it. That finally changed last year when she bought a house in Bellefonte. Unrolling it for the first time in more than 30 years, she says, “I took the wax paper off it, and it was almost like I saw the print breathe.” It now hangs in her living room, where “everyone who comes in will see it. It gives me so much joy.”

Ryan Jones ’95 Com  |  Editor
ryanjones@psu.edu  |  @RJPennStater

More Online