Know Your Neighborhood: Old City Origins of  Penn & Villanova  


The University of Pennsylvania, one of the oldest & most prestigious schools in the nation, was
established in Old City. The university was founded at N. 4th and Arch Streets as the
Charity School in 1740.  In 1751, the school was reorganized as the Publik Academy of Philadelphia, which was based upon the ideals espoused in Benjamin Franklin's 1749 pamphlet entitled
"Proposals Related to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania." 

Not long afterward, in 1755, the school was again reorganized and renamed the College of Philadelphia. The College resided in Old City until 1802, when it moved to larger quarters at S. 9th and Chestnut Streets. 

Initially the school was housed in the unused house that had been built for U.S. Presidents when Philadelphia was the temporary capital.  This building was torn down in 1829 & replaced with twin buildings, College Hall and Medical Hall, which formed the core of the school at 9th and Chestnut Sts until the move to West Philadelphia.

                                   (stereoscopic photo of College Hall and Medical Hall)

In 1872, it relocated to its current site in West Philadelphia.


The University of Pennsylvania is not the only major university that traces its roots to Old
City. Founded in 1811, St. Augustine’s Academy, affiliated with St. Augustine's Church,
provided a parochial education (for men) in Old City. The building at 427 Vine Street still bears the
name of the academy above its door. 

Clergy affiliated with the Academy founded the Augustinian College of Villanova, now Villanova University, the oldest Catholic college in Pennsylvania, in 1842.  The man credited with purchasing the land which eventually became Villanova University was Father Thomas Kyle.   Kyle did so without any authorization or funds from the Augustinians.  He borrowed the down payment for the land from Mrs. Lennon, a parishioner of the Old St. Augustine's Church in Philadelphia (whom he never paid back).  The college closed from 1845 - 1846 after the burning of St Augustine's in the Nativist Riots of 1844.  It reopened & graduated it's first class in 1847.

1849 view