That Our Daughters May Be as Cornerstones: A History of Irving College

With the passage of time, do most current residents of Mechanicsburg, Pa. even know its borough once had college? And that it was only for women? Beyond a State of Pennsylvania marker denoting Irving College as the first college to offer degrees in the arts and sciences to women and that two of its building still stand to this day, many residents are surely unaware of the institution’s history. Named after famed author Washington Irving, this college for women was part of nationwide trend in the nineteenth century to finally educate women, but a trend that was always fraught with opposition. Some believed ‘frail’ women should not be educated (or at least educated to the same level as men), while others believed women’s colleges should only be finishing schools, offering courses that continued to tie women to the home. For Irving College, it began as a struggle: a struggle to begin, a struggle to build an endowment, a struggle in administration, so that ultimately the college had to temporarily close. It then entered a golden age under its famed President E. E. Campbell where the college drew more students, built additional buildings, added classes and services and developed a music conservatory that rivaled many in the state. But the struggle returned and after its closing in 1929, the Great Depression, the lack of a demonstrative leader, and the fact that the college was never really owned by the trustees, itself doomed the school from ever continuing.