Penn State Abington and the Ogontz School

Anyone traversing the hilly, tree-lined paths of Penn State Abington would be hard-pressed to imagine the college in its first incarnation. Among the most diverse of Penn State University s commonwealth campuses today, the college s lineage dates to 1850 as the Chestnut Street Female Seminary in Philadelphia. This pictorial history traces its evolution from a private finishing school for affluent girls to an affordable public college that draws students from 17 states and 29 countries. Among the celebrated figures who contributed handsomely to the school s prestige and growth are Civil War financier Jay Cooke, who transformed his suburban Ogontz mansion into the renamed Ogontz School for Young Ladies; Abby A. Sutherland, the school s most influential principal/president, who astutely moved the school to a handsome tract of land in Abington Township, which she donated to Penn State University in 1950; and famed aviator Amelia Earhart. In the past two decades, under the direction of Dr. Karen Wiley Sandler, chancellor emerita, the college has become the thriving degree-granting residential institution that it is today.