When President Val Smith leaves Swarthmore in the summer of 2027, her successor will have to take her place in managing the wide-ranging set of challenges that Smith has faced over the course of her time at the college. The new president will contend with the complex legacies of the COVID pandemic, recurring tensions between student protesters and administration, and federal antagonism toward institutions of higher education during President Trump’s second term in office. In addition, Smith’s successor will have to decide how to use their new residence on campus, the Courtney Smith House. While ostensibly insignificant in comparison with the issues mentioned above, the varying usage of the house has played a central role in the history of the college, often serving as a reflection of the current president’s style of leadership. In anticipation of a new era for the Courtney Smith House, The Phoenix consulted professors, alumni, and documents from the College Archive to compile a history of the house’s place in campus life.
1879-1909: Ulverstone and the Sproul Observatory
The building now known as the Courtney Smith House was originally constructed in 1879 as a sample house for the West Hill Land Development Company, a corporation responsible for many of the oldest homes in the Swarthmore area. The house, then known as “Ulverstone,” belonged to Swarthmore College Superintendent Thomas Foulke and “College Matron” Phebe Foulke, who were married. At the time, College President Edward Hicks Magill (for whom Magill Walk is named) resided in the building that currently houses the InterCenter (IC), located near the center of campus.
In the early 1900s, Pennsylvania Governor William Cameron Sproul, a Swarthmore alumnus, donated the astronomical equipment necessary to transform the original presidential residence into a research-grade observatory. The Sproul Observatory, featuring the structure familiar to current Swatties as the IC Dome, was completed in 1909. Following this renovation, Isaac Hallowell Clothier (of the wealthy Quaker Clothier family that would eventually donate several buildings to Swarthmore) purchased Ulverstone on behalf of the college, and the family of President Joseph Swain relocated to the three-story home.
1909-1969: From ‘Ulverstone’ to the ‘Courtney Smith House’
Little documentation of campus activities involving the president’s house is available for the years between Swain’s move in 1909 and the early 1940s. Archival research did reveal that President Frank Aydelotte, Swain’s successor and the founder of the college’s Honors Program, made significant renovations to the building following his arrival on campus. These changes left the space well-suited to host groups of guests for banquets and longer-term visits.
In 1940, John W. Nason replaced Aydelotte as president. Nason received an honorary doctorate from the college for his leadership in an initiative to train American and Chinese naval officers at Swarthmore during the Second World War (although this program received pushback from the local Quaker community at the time). During this period, one of the 49 naval officers residing at the college became engaged to a Swarthmore professor; Nason himself hosted the reception for the couple’s wedding at Ulverstone.
Courtney C. Smith, who succeeded Nason, continued his predecessor’s efforts to support a sense of community on campus. A historical bulletin in the College Archive reveals that Smith collaborated with the Student-Faculty Relations Committee to revive a “Swarthmore custom” of Friday afternoon tea and sherry services for students, professors, and staff. The document does not explicitly state the location of these receptions, but it suggests that they were held in the president’s home.
For many, Smith’s legacy has come to be defined by a dark series of events that unfolded later in his time in office, during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. In an extended conflict between student protesters and the college over the extreme underrepresentation of people of color in the student body (5%, according to a New York Times article from the time), a group of roughly 25 demonstrators from the Swarthmore African-American Student Society (SASS) occupied the admissions office. After just over a week of negotiations with these protesters, a distressed Smith suffered fatal heart failure at his desk, the first and only Swarthmore president to die in office. Upon hearing this news, the SASS members exited the building out of respect for the late president.
In 1982, the Swarthmore Class of 1957 made a joint donation to the college for their 25th reunion, financing the dedication of the presidential residence to the memory of Courtney Smith.
1969-1991: The Courtney Smith House as a Campus Space
According to William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English Literature Peter Schmidt, who has served on Swarthmore’s faculty since the 1970s, the Courtney Smith House “was used several times a month for Swarthmore-centered events, not solely as a private space,” from the time that he arrived at the college until the mid-2000s. Numerous internal memos and copies of invitations substantiate Schmidt’s claim, suggesting that the Courtney Smith House of the 1970s was a hub for banquets, administrative meetings, and college visitors.
David Fraser, who became president in 1982, seems to have built on the precedent set by his forerunners Robert D. Cross (1969-1971) and Theodore Friend (1973-1982). The College Archive contains several personal letters from Fraser to the various academics and political figures who came to speak on campus, inviting these visitors to his home for dinners with faculty and staff members.
Fraser also opened his home to students, as one alum from the class of 1985 recalls: “He was very welcoming to students who felt displaced by the fire in Tarble [which burned the student center to the ground in 1983]. He insisted they come over to his house, where he served cookies and coffee. He was very warm and eager to interact with us.”
1991-2026: The Blooms, Rebecca Chopp, and Val Smith
The Courtney Smith House had by far its most prominent role in campus life when it served as the residence of Al and Peggy Bloom. Al Bloom, who served as college president from 1991 until 2009, renovated the house upon his arrival to campus. According to Isaac H. Clothier, Jr. Professor Emerita of Biology Amy Cheng Vollmer, Bloom designed the new kitchen himself, with an eye toward supporting large, catered receptions. Many faculty and alumni reflected fondly on the many events the Blooms hosted.
“During my student days, [Bloom] hosted events in his home, often on a weekly basis,” said Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies Sa’ed Atshan ’06. “The President’s house was a central hub for intellectual vitality and community building. I remember how special it felt to be part of many of those gatherings. [Bloom] knew Swarthmore deeply and we, collectively, knew our President.”
Susan W. Lippincott Professor of Modern and Classical Languages Sibelan Forrester echoed Atshan’s sentiments. Commenting that Bloom “apparently (with his wife Peg) enjoyed hosting interesting events and even having interesting guests of the College stay there while visiting,” Forrester emphasized that the president’s eagerness to utilize his home reflected a general interest in the campus community: “I really liked it that he’d pause if he passed someone on campus and ask about their research; Val will do this too.”
While most interviewees did not dispute Smith’s commitment to students and faculty, many pointed to the striking disparity between the number of events the Blooms hosted and the number of events hosted by Smith and her predecessor, Rebecca S. Chopp.
A representative from Swarthmore’s senior administration could not respond to The Phoenix’s request for comment at the time of publication.
Peggy Chan Professor of History Timothy Burke noted that Chopp had seemed slightly less inclined to invite visitors to the Courntey Smith House than the Blooms but had continued to host administrative gatherings and dinners with the college’s Board of Managers there, a claim with which Forrester agreed. Cheng Vollmer added that Chopp had hosted a number of receptions for various groups of faculty, including one for those from her home state of Kansas and one for first-generation immigrants.
Toward the beginning of her presidency, Smith, too, hosted dinners with faculty, alumni, and staff. “I recall Val hosting receptions after the first faculty meeting and final faculty meeting of the academic year,” Professor Forrester said. “I think I attended one very nice dinner in a smaller group, where Val was getting acquainted with faculty.” Cheng Vollmer, who retired just under halfway through Smith’s presidency, noted no difference between Smith’s and Chopp’s respective uses of the house. In later years, however, a sharp decline in events at the residence was evident.
“I am aware of very few people at Swarthmore who have ever set foot in the Courtney Smith House under President Valerie Smith’s tenure for over a decade now,” an anonymous faculty member told The Phoenix.
Schmidt, adopting a slightly softer stance, shared that “President Smith does occasionally use the house for semi-public meetings, including deliberations by the Promotion and Tenure Committee (of which she played a part). But she uses the House for far fewer events than presidents in the recent past, especially Al Bloom.”
Burke, while cautioning that “it’s important to guard against one’s nostalgia,” agreed that the disparity between the Bloom and Smith eras with regard to this issue is undeniable. Forrester added that Smith’s hosting “seems to have stopped after COVID.”
Explaining the Shift: COVID, New Facilities, and a Shift in Campus Culture
Faculty members offered varying explanations for this change, some more critical of the administration than others. The Phoenix’s anonymous source argued that the shift is “the result of a serious form of corruption.” Associate Professor of Biology Bradley Davidson ’91, too, expressed his feeling that “a burgeoning administration and an inappropriate focus of college resources to serve this administration have been detrimental to the ability of this college to fulfill its primary function as an institution of higher education.”
Meanwhile, Burke joined Forrester in connecting the shift with COVID. He commented that, more broadly, the Board of Managers “seems to have less interest in talking to the faculty post-pandemic,” resulting in fewer of the Board-faculty dinners that had taken place at the house historically.
“It’s the same thing that everybody in the world is talking about,” he added. “The one really intense year of isolation broke a lot of people’s calendrical, cyclical practice of socializing. I don’t think that’s [unique to Swarthmore]. I think it’s everywhere, that people have had to slowly think about how — or whether — to reboot the kinds of social gathering that they did.”
Many interviewees commented that the addition of new spaces on campus has to some extent obviated the need for the Courtney Smith House as a site for receptions and other events. Though the Blooms were enthusiastic hosts, Cheng Vollmer commented, the centrality of their home in campus life was partially due to the lack of spaces like the Scheuer Room and the Lang Performing Arts Center lobby. Burke added that the advent of Broad Table Tavern and the Swarthmore Inn meant that the Courtney Smith House was no longer the most convenient or cost-effective location for banquets or guest accommodations. He noted that financial pressures had been a factor in the house’s reduced role even under Bloom, with an annual post-commencement faculty reception indefinitely suspended during the 2008 financial crisis.
In conjunction with these physical changes to campus life, many of Swarthmore’s longtime faculty members noted a pronounced shift in the college’s culture over the past few decades. Forrester commented that expensive local housing has driven many professors and staff members away from campus, adding that “the demands for research and publishing to get tenure, or to find a steady job if the person is a visitor, mean that people mostly don’t come to campus on the days they aren’t teaching.” She highlighted that recent developments in class scheduling have supported this new model.
“There’s been a move to make it even easier to teach only two days a week by scheduling Monday/Wednesday 75-minute classes as well as the Tuesday/Thursday ones. If I were a cool, youthful professor, I’d maybe want to live in West Philly too and take the SEPTA [Regional Rail],” Forrester said.
Cheng Vollmer agreed with Forrester’s assessment, emphasizing that the president’s house is not the only building to have seen a decline in campus events.
“The Dean of Students’ house was the one where students attended lots of events — but it depended on the dean. I was sorry that we had deans who chose not to do so, even when living in a house that the college provided. Some deans hosted Halloween parties and open houses regularly, but not so much in recent times.”
Forrester said that the migration of campus faculty and staff away from the Swarthmore area is reflective of a shift in the campus climate. Recalling Swarthmore in the 1990s, she described a more lax collegiate environment, in which formal regulations surrounding tenure and other elements of academic protocol took a back seat to the cultivation of a tight-knit, innovative community.
Burke also commented on this broader evolution, noting an increase in concerns about the college’s legal liability regarding accidents that might arise from informal student-faculty gatherings.
“Faculty have retreated significantly from having students as guests in their homes at seminar dinners and so on. I think there was some increasing thought that having students in homes presented a form of risk. If you hadn’t salted your entryway after a snowstorm and a student slipped, the college is technically possibly liable. If a student comes to your house and says they’re 21 and they have four glasses of wine and they get sick — is that a risk that we should be engaging in? That became the question.”
In addition to these legal questions, he and other faculty members highlighted new challenges arising from the friction between student protesters and the administration. Burke recounted a moment which he viewed as a turning point in Smith’s involvement in campus life: following a series of talks with students regarding Title IX reforms early in her presidency, the location of a final conversation between Smith and the student-activists was leaked, leading to a significant presence of student demonstrators at the meeting.
“I think she felt, by the end of that, that her availability and accessibility as part of that process had been abused somewhat,” he said. Not long after this conflict, the COVID pandemic was the final nail in the coffin for the proposed collaboration between Smith and the protesters, an initiative called the Garnet Collaborative. The Collaborative, for which planning had begun in fall of 2019, was an attempt “to bring students and faculty and staff together, but the whole initiative fizzled out around March 2020.”
Beginning in October 2023, a sharp increase in campus involvement in the activist group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was met with significant pushback from the college administration. As the cycle of protests and disciplinary action continued and the conflict between students and administrative staff grew more volatile, a sign was installed in front of the Courtney Smith House designating the building as private property and warning that “entry without authorization will be considered trespassing.” Burke commented that he felt the addition of the sign was intended to establish legal precedent in case of action from SJP or other similar student groups.
To the President-To-Be: Swarthmore’s Longtime Faculty Reflect on Hopes for the Future
As for the future of the president’s house under a new administration, some faculty expressed uncertainty about the feasibility of a return to the model established by the Blooms. Burke raised concerns that a future president might be torn between committing to an overwhelming amount of student events at the house or prioritizing hosting some students over others. “I’d imagine the President’s House might not be the best place for frequent social gatherings,” added Forrester. “The gatherings I most enjoyed there were smaller if not more focused in terms of the people attending.”
Overall, however, the message was clear:
“Swarthmore provides the Courtney Smith House to serve as the residency of the president during their tenure free of cost. It also serves two additional and fundamental purposes: to enable the president to easily make it to events on campus, including on weeknights and weekends; and also for the president to easily host receptions and meals in the building,” said The Phoenix’s anonymous source.
“I think it is important for the president to continue to live in the [Courtney] Smith House and to use it to host college guests and for it to be a place to host meetings,” added Cheng Vollmer.
Schmidt commented that “many more public activities (including receptions for visiting speakers; dinners given with students, faculty and/or staff invited; meetings with community members where the small president’s office in Parrish or other rooms are not suitable or preferred; etc) would return the house to the function it had from the 1970s to the early 2000s.”
“I would like to see a president who spends at least as much time being in conversations with people in the community as they do raising money with wealthy alums,” said Burke. “I don’t know if a ‘Bloomian’ model is feasible, but I’d like to see an attempt.”
Note: Friends Historical Library Associate Curator Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Melissa Nugent ’29 contributed reporting to this article.
