Horton Hall, Women's Dormitory

Horton Hall was next to join the hilltop group that forms the iconic image of the college. Rosser's scheme provided a central block with three residential wings in a building that is generally Romanesque with an eye to Richardson's Sever Hall at Harvard. As befitted its more domestic purpose, Horton was more generously ornamented than the austere gymnasium. Originally, the building imitated the ribbons and wreaths of Harry Yessler's updating of Old Main ( CU14.1), but many of these elements were pared away in the Victorian-hating twentieth century. Two other buildings complete the front range of buildings and mark the end of the Cumberland Valley State Normal School phase of the campus. At the far end of the entrance group is Gilbert Hall, the first purpose-built school of practice on the campus. It was designed and constructed between 1911 and 1915 by a local builder turned architect, Maurice Rhoads. Rhoads continued the brick character of the campus but with a nod toward early-twentieth-century Arts and Crafts. The same architect designed the “Principal's Residence,” or Martin House, in 1907 in a Colonial Revival mode. Its position facing the front lawn recalls the hierarchy of other campuses of eastern Pennsylvania including Frank Furness's Williamson School ( DE27) and the faculty row that guards the entrance to Haverford College ( DE36).