Trout Library Blog

New: Souvenir of Pennsylvania R.R. Scenery

The newest addition to the archives is a donation by President Dr. Jon Jay DeTemple and Mrs. Margi DeTemple, First Lady. It is a collection of scenes along the Pennsylvania Railroad. Published as a travel souvenir sometime between 1880 and 1890, the images cover scenes from New York City and Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and Allegheny, Pennsylvania. The book includes images of train stations, tracks and the surrounding landscape along the Pennsylvania Railroad lines. The Bryn Mawr train station we know and love is included, as well as the Bryn Mawr Hotel, a building that was destroyed by fire in October, 1887 (Reed). The hotel was rebuilt and eventually became The Baldwin School and still stands across Montgomery Avenue from Harcum College.

According to the Catskill Archive.com (Mallery), these small travel souvenir albums were popular at the time. The pictures are illustrations based on photographs. These illustrations allowed the books to be reproduced through a process called lithography. This type of printing was achieved by pressing four to six separate stones with the same carved image, each with different tones of ink. The result is a monochrome image (Rulon Miller Books). The book was printed in Portland, Maine by Chisholm Brothers. Chisholm Brothers printed many of these souvenir albums.

The cover is a maroon cloth binding with an embossed scroll pattern. The title of the book, Souvenir of Pennsylvania R. R. Scenery is stamped into the cover in gilt. The book has an interesting accordion-fold construction, meaning the pages are one long, continuous sheet folded several times.

The intended purpose of this book at publishing was to provide a memento to travelers, now the book has a new purpose. It can serve as a historical reference to the buildings and environments around the railway at the end of the 19th century.

The book is available for research at the Charles. H. Trout Library. You can see a scan of the book including all pages on our digital archive. 

Sources

Mallery, Timothy J. Souvenir Album of the Catskill Mountains. 1884. Catskill Archive.com, Mountaintop Historical Society. https://www.catskillarchive.com/glaser/index.htm. Accessed 24 Nov. 2025.

Reed, Alison J. “The Bryn Mawr Hotel.” The First 300, Lower Merion Historical Society, collections.lowermerionhistory.org/home/full-text/contents/bryn-mawr-hotel/. Accessed 21 Nov. 2025.

Rulon Miller Books. “A recent acquisition.” Oct. 2010, https://static-prod.lib.princeton.edu/visual_materials/Misc/Rulon-Miller_Books_Viewbooks.pdf. 

We’re excited to announce that Harcum College’s alumni magazine collection has been fully digitized and is now available online through our digital archive — free and accessible 24/7.

Spanning over 70 years, this collection traces the evolution of our alumni publications: from The Alumnae Bulletin (1950–1959), to The Harcum Junior College Bulletin (1969–1974), and Patches (1974–2024). Each issue captures a vivid snapshot of life at Harcum— stories of students, faculty, alumni, and the many milestones that have shaped our community.

Whether you’re an alum seeking a familiar name or a researcher exploring the College’s legacy, this digitized collection offers a powerful lens into Harcum’s past. While a few gaps in the collection remain, it's unclear whether these resulted from paused publication or lost issues.

We invite you to explore this resource and reconnect with decades of shared history. Visit our digital archive to browse the full collection.
 

Eagle-eyed observers around campus may have noticed recent construction activity at the Bryn Mawr Substation. This work, undertaken by Amtrak, is more than just a facelift; it's part of a significant three-year project to upgrade the train line stretching from the Philadelphia Zoo to Paoli. Interestingly, this isn't the first major transformation for the Bryn Mawr Substation, a structure which has been a backdrop to our community, intertwined with the story of Harcum College.

Built in 1915, the same year Harcum College first opened its doors in Melville Hall, the Bryn Mawr Substation stands as a silent witness to the college's growth. Constructed by the Pennsylvania Railroad as part of the electrification of their line, the substation's early construction would have coincided with Harcum's initial upgrades to Melville Hall, marking the beginning of a shared history within the Bryn Mawr landscape.

While the Bryn Mawr Substation has become an unassuming part of the local scenery, the Harcum College Archive Collection offers glimpses into its past. The few photographs featuring the substation often capture it in the background.

The earliest visual record of the substation in the Harcum College Archive appears in a photograph of Bedford Hall. Although undated, we know this image cannot predate 1947, the year Harcum acquired the building. Even in the background of this image, the Bryn Mawr Substation is visible, its structure remarkably similar to its present-day form, offering a tangible link between the college's mid-20th century and today.
 

Decades later, in 1974, the Bryn Mawr Substation made another appearance in Harcum's history, captured in two photographs within The Harlequin, the college yearbook. These images, documenting the dedication of Harcum's new tennis courts, feature the substation in the distance. Local sportscaster Joe Pellegrino joined students for a game, watched by two hundred members of the Harcum community. The steadfast presence of the substation in the backdrop underscores its enduring place within the college's physical environment.

Though the familiar presence of the Bryn Mawr Substation will be missed, its legacy remains embedded in the visual and historical fabric of the campus. The arrival of the new substation signals progress, a continuation of the ever-evolving relationship between the college and the infrastructure surrounding it. Just as Harcum has grown and changed over the years, so too will this space, shaping the future while carrying echoes of the past.

Recently, I was asked for records from our archive relating to Elizabeth "Libbie" Hall Wilis. What we found was a new piece of Harcum College history I think is worth documenting.

Willis was the Head of the Academic Department and Prinicpal from approximately 1921 to 1929 and later an advisor to Edith Harcum until approximately 1934. Elizabeth Hall Willis, who went by Libbie, obtained a degree in painting from Syracuse University. Before coming to the Harcum School, she had a career as an art teacher at the University of Arkansas and at Chatham Hall. It was while teaching art at Chatham Hall she met a student, Georgia O'Keefe. You can read about this encounter and the on-going professional relationship between Willis and O'Keefe in Linda Grasso's book Equal under the Sky: Georgia O'Keefe & Twentieth Century Feminism. 

Willis came to the Harcum School to lead the academics and college preparation program. Her title in 1921 was “Head of the Academic Department” but it was later changed to Principal. Throughout her time at Harcum, she was mentioned in the yearbook, Purple Patches, especially in association with her work with college preparation studies. In the "Class Will" in 1922 the students express fond appreciation and love for her. The 1923 yearbook was dedicated to Mrs. Willis. This is quite a show of support by the student body. Her portrait finally appears in the 1929 yearbook. She left Harcum School after 1929, although she was mentioned as an advisor in the 1934 academic calendar, perhaps she stayed in touch to advise Edith Harcum.  

The biggest surprise of all is that we found her on video. In those years, Edith Harcum’s son Bill Harcum was given a silent film camera and he took silent moving images around the school. The films were digitized and Bill Harcum gave commentary on the films. You can see Elizabeth Willis briefly at 0:12 seconds, right at the beginning of the film. Bill Harcum mentions Mrs. Willis by name and calls her the head mistress. 

Libbie Hall Willis had a interesting life as an artist and academic before and after her time at Harcum College. Harcum is fortunate to be able to claim her as one of our own.