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Lark Hall, Lancaster Theological Seminary

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1893–1894, John Smith; 1977 restored, P. Richard Frantz. 555 W. James St.
  • (Photograph by Matthew Aungst)
  • (Damie Stillman)
  • (Damie Stillman)
  • (Photograph by Matthew Aungst)
  • (Photograph by Matthew Aungst)

Founded as a German Reformed seminary in 1825 in Carlisle, it soon moved to York and then in 1837 to Mercersburg. The removal of Marshall College in Mercersburg to join Franklin College in Lancaster in 1853 caused the seminary to follow suit in 1871. In 1893 it commissioned a Harrisburg architect to design an all-purpose building with classrooms, administrative offices, and a chapel in the semicircular extension. It pays homage to H. H. Richardson in the great Syrian arch of the entrance, but its strongly differentiated volumes expressing different functions and wildly asymmetrical composition make it very much a descendent of Frank Furness's University of Pennsylvania Library ( PH147.3). Sensitively restored, it is a regional treasure.

Writing Credits

Author: 
George E. Thomas
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Data

What's Nearby

Franklin and Marshall College
Old Main, Goethean, and Diagnothian Halls
Day and Klauder's Campus
Hensel Hall
“Wheatland,”William Jenkins/James Buchanan House

Citation

George E. Thomas, "Lark Hall, Lancaster Theological Seminary", [Lancaster, Pennsylvania], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/PA-02-LA25.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of PA vol 2

Buildings of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania, George E. Thomas, with Patricia Likos Ricci, Richard J. Webster, Lawrence M. Newman, Robert Janosov, and Bruce Thomas. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012, 321-321.

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