To continue my history of Swarthmore series for this semester, I decided to begin with an important date in Swarthmore’s formative years. It may be hard to imagine a Swarthmore without iconic features such as Kohlberg, McCabe, Magill Walk, and the omnipresent construction, but nevertheless, I ask you to try. The year is 1881, and Swarthmore’s campus consists of one building, Parrish Hall. Parrish Hall was where students studied, slept, ate, and worked. The enrollment that year reached 266 students, and it makes one wonder how often they had to do the “Swat swivel” to avoid being heard with a campus and class size that small. Parrish 1 was a bit stumpier than the one we currently know and love. The college was rapidly expanding, and plans were being made to build Swarthmore’s second major construction, a building expressly for academic use: the Science Hall (catchy name, I know). The board of managers met on Sept. 24, 1881, to lay out the location for the new hall. The original plan was to place what is now Trotter Hall 25 feet away from the western side of Parrish, where Clothier Circle now sits. This plan was rejected due to fire concerns. There was concern that in an unthinkable scenario such as Parrish catching on fire, the fire could easily spread to Trotter.
The next day, Parrish caught on fire. Around 11 p.m. on Sept. 15, a loud explosion was heard coming from the western side of the Parrish dome. President Magill (of Magill Walk fame) was returning from visiting Issac Clothier (whose son, Morris, is the namesake of Clothier) when he heard the bang. All students were safely evacuated. Belongings from the West end of the building, the men’s side, were largely saved through a chain of people hauling them out. Wind blew much of the fire to the east side of the building, the women’s side, which was quickly reduced to ashes. The wings of Parrish were constructed with walls of flame-resistant materials that were intended to stop flames from spreading. However, these flame-resistant walls did not rise high enough to stem the flames from going over them. You will recall from middle school science class that heat, of which flames are composed, tends to rise. That is exactly what occurred that evening, as the flames rose over the walls and spread to the roof, which was not flame-resistant.
By 1 a.m., the building was collapsing in on itself and no longer safe to enter. Fire companies from Philadelphia arrived around 4 a.m., but there was little to save. Much of the stone structure remained intact, but the interior had been gutted by the flames. The Friends Historical Library, on the second floor, was also largely safe from damage, owing to its fireproof walls and floor. The board of managers was summoned by a telegram, and they arrived the next day. At 7:30 a.m. on Sept. 16, breakfast was served at its usual time on Parrish Beach. Chester County Military Academy, now Widener University, generously provided the breakfast. The board of managers had rented houses in Media, PA, to house the college, and classes were able to resume two weeks later.
Parrish was rebuilt within a year, a massive effort made possible through the many generous donations made by alumni and others. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Francis Parkman, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow donated their complete works to the new library. By the one-year anniversary of the fire, Sept. 15, 1882, the building was rebuilt enough for classes to resume for the new school year. Ultimately, three students chose not to continue studying at Swarthmore, but the rest stayed on through the difficult year following the fire. One bright spot emerging from the fire (no pun intended) was Swarthmore’s beloved pseudo-mascot, the Phoenix. Inspired by the triumphant reascension of Parrish from its ashes, a group of students founded Swarthmore’s first student newspaper The Phoenix. They choose the bird for its obvious symbolic importance of emerging from destruction in a brighter and stronger form.
Trotter Hall would also be completed the year following the fire. It was originally opened to serve as a hall for studying the natural sciences. It was called Science Hall, in a Quaker and Swarthmore tradition where buildings were not awarded specific names but rather were named after their function. For example, Parrish was primarily called “the main building” or “college hall.” It would, at some point, adopt the name the “Hall of Physics and Engineering.” The West and East wings of the building were built in 1895 and 1919-20, respectively. The East Wing was dedicated to biology and was named the Trotter Laboratory of Biology after biology professor Spencer Trotter (more on him later). In 1919, Hicks Hall, a former engineering building that stood where Singer stands now, was completed and served as the home of the engineering department. Trotter then became the Hall of Physics and Biology until Martin Hall was built in 1937, and the Biology department relocated there. After the biology department vacated the building, the entire structure was renamed to Trotter Hall. Once the Science Center was finished in 1960, physics moved out, and Trotter underwent the first of many renovations it would experience.
Previously, Trotter had been a bizarrely laid out building with an inaccessible basement and going up or down a staircase was required to move from one wing to the other. The new Trotter was noted for its coat racks, large music-listening room, and tea pantries on every floor.
The story surrounding the Trotter controversy was first broken in April of 2022 in an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Professor Spencer Trotter and student Bird T. Baldwin ’00 had excavated remains from a Native American burying ground in Chester and moved them to the college’s collection. The skeleton and its accompanying funerary items were displayed during a meeting of a scientific association on campus. These heinous actions have been decried by President Val Smith and have led to a revaluation of the osteology collection and the legacy of Spencer Trotter. Trotter’s actions, along with his eugenicist publications promoting a racial hierarchy, led to President Smith forming a committee to reexamine the name of Trotter Hall. This decision is not without controversy, as Steve Harari ’78 criticizes in the Fall 2023 Alumni Bulletin, “I also don’t see the merit in renaming Trotter Hall… Revisionist behavior like this undermines Swarthmore’s mission of intellectual honesty and curiosity.” For my part, I propose we adopt the solution that removes Trotter’s name from the building while keeping continuity with Swarthmore’s past. As such, I recommend we rename Trotter Hall, the home of the History and Political Science departments, as well as the Writing Center, to Science Hall and confuse generations of first-years to come.
Special thanks to Elizabeth Weber-Handwerker ’98 and David Bing ’03 for their insight into Swarthmore history.
