University of Pennsylvania


The University of Pennsylvania is a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of founder and first president Benjamin Franklin, who had advocated for an educational institution that trained leaders in academia, commerce, and public service.
The university has 4 undergraduate schools and 12 graduate and professional schools. Schools enrolling undergraduates include the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Wharton School, and the School of Nursing. Among its graduate schools are its law school, whose first professor, James Wilson, helped write the U.S. Constitution; and its medical school, the first in North America.
In 2023, Penn ranked third among U.S. universities in research expenditures, according to the National Science Foundation. As of 2025, its endowment was, making it the sixth-wealthiest private academic institution in the nation. The University of Pennsylvania's main campus is in the University City neighborhood of West Philadelphia, and is centered around College Hall. Campus landmarks include Houston Hall, the first modern student union; and Franklin Field, the nation's first dual-level college football stadium and the nation's longest-standing NCAA Division I college football stadium in continuous operation. The university's athletics program, the Penn Quakers, fields varsity teams in 33 sports as a member of NCAA Division I's Ivy League conference.
Penn alumni, trustees, and faculty include 8 Founding Fathers of the United States who signed the Declaration of Independence, 7 who signed the U.S. Constitution, 24 members of the Continental Congress, 3 presidents of the United States, 38 Nobel laureates, 9 foreign heads of state, 3 United States Supreme Court justices, at least 4 Supreme Court justices of foreign nations, 32 U.S. senators, 163 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 19 U.S. Cabinet secretaries, 46 governors, 28 State Supreme Court justices, 36 living undergraduate billionaires, 5 Medal of Honor recipients, and over 200 Olympic athletes.

History

In 1740, a group of Philadelphians organized to erect a great preaching hall for George Whitefield, a traveling Anglican evangelist, which was designed and constructed by Edmund Woolley. It was the largest building in Philadelphia at the time, and thousands of people attended it to hear Whitefield preach.
In the fall of 1749, Benjamin Franklin, a Founding Father and polymath in Philadelphia, circulated a pamphlet, "Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania," his vision for what he called a "Public Academy of Philadelphia".
On June 16, 1755, the College of Philadelphia was chartered, paving the way for the addition of undergraduate instruction.
Penn identifies as the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, though this representation is challenged by Princeton and Columbia since the College of Philadelphia was not chartered or commence classes until 1755 and the first board of trustees was not convened until 1749, arguably making it the sixth or fifth-oldest.

Campus

The University of Pennsylvania's campus spans approximately 299 acres in West Philadelphia, featuring a blend of historic and modern architecture. Key facilities include the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine, the Penn Museum, and the recently constructed Pennovation Center, which serves as a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship.
Much of the current architecture on Penn's campus was designed by the Philadelphia-based architecture firm Cope and Stewardson, whose owners were Philadelphia born and raised architects and Penn professors who also designed Princeton University and a large part of Washington University in St. Louis. They were known for having combined the Gothic architecture of the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge with the local landscape to establish the Collegiate Gothic style.
Penn's main artery at the center of Penn's Campus Historic District is Locust Walk, a pedestrian only walkway first announced by Penn President, Harold Stassen in 1948. Work began in the summer of 1960, and was completed in 1972.
The present core campus covers over in a contiguous area of West Philadelphia's University City section, and the older heart of the campus comprises the University of Pennsylvania Campus Historic District. All of Penn's schools and most of its research institutes are located on this campus. The surrounding neighborhood includes several restaurants, bars, a large upscale grocery store, and a movie theater on the western edge of campus. Penn's core campus borders Drexel University and is a few blocks from the University City campus of Saint Joseph's University, which absorbed University of the Sciences in Philadelphia in a merger, and The Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College.
Wistar Institute, a cancer research center, is also located on Penn's campus. In 2014, a new seven-story glass and steel building was completed next to the institute's original brick edifice built in 1897 further expanding collaboration between the university and the Wistar Institute.
The Module 6 Utility Plant and Garage at Penn was designed by BLT Architects and completed in 1995. Module 6 is located at 38th and Walnut and includes spaces for 627 vehicles, of storefront retail operations, a 9,500-ton chiller module and corresponding extension of the campus chilled water loop, and a 4,000-ton ice storage facility.
In 2010, in its first significant expansion across the Schuylkill River, Penn purchased at the northwest corner of 34th Street and Grays Ferry Avenue, the then site of DuPont's Marshall Research Labs. In October 2016, with help from architects Matthias Hollwich, Marc Kushner, and KSS Architects, Penn completed the design and renovation of the center piece of the project, a former paint factory named Pennovation Works, which houses shared desks, wet labs, common areas, a pitch bleacher, and other attributes of a tech incubator. The rest of the site, known as South Bank, is a mixture of lightly refurbished industrial buildings that serve as affordable and flexible workspaces and land for future development.

Parks and arboreta

In 2007, Penn acquired about between the campus and the Schuylkill River at the former site of the Philadelphia Civic Center and a nearby site then owned by the United States Postal Service. Dubbed the Postal Lands, the site extends from Market Street on the north to Penn's Bower Field on the south, including the former main regional U.S. Postal Building at 30th and Market Streets, now the regional office for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Over the next decade, the site became the home to educational, research, biomedical, and mixed-use facilities. The first phase, comprising a park and athletic facilities, opened in the fall of 2011.
In September 2011, Penn completed the construction of the, Penn Park, which features passive and active recreation and athletic components framed and subdivided by canopy trees, lawns, and meadows. It is located east of the Highline Green and stretches from Walnut to South Streets.
Penn maintains two arboreta. The first, the roughly Penn Campus Arboretum at the University of Pennsylvania, encompasses the entire University City main campus. The campus arboretum is an urban forest with over 6,500 trees representing 240 species of trees and shrubs, ten specialty gardens, and five urban parks, which has been designated as a Tree Campus USA since 2009 and formally recognized as an accredited ArbNet Arboretum since 2017. Penn maintains an interactive website linked to Penn's comprehensive tree inventory, which allows users to explore Penn's entire collection of trees. The 92-acre second arboretum Morris Arboretum is the official arboretum of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and includes more than 13,000 labelled plants of 2,500 types, representing the temperate floras of North America, Asia, and Europe, with a primary focus on Asia.

New Bolton Center

Penn also owns the New Bolton Center, the research and large-animal health care center of its veterinary school. Located near Kennett Square, New Bolton Center received nationwide media attention when Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro underwent surgery at its Widener Hospital for injuries suffered while running in the Preakness Stakes.

Libraries

Penn library system has grown into a system with 300 full-time equivalent employees, and a total operating budget of more than. The library system has 6.19 million book and serial volumes as well as 4.23 million microform items and 1.11 million e-books. It subscribes to over 68,000 print serials and e-journals.
The university has 19 libraries. Van Pelt Library on the Penn campus is the university's main library. The other 18 include:
  • Annenberg School for Communication library located on Walnut Street between 36th and 37th Streets
  • Archaeology and Anthropology Library located at the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
  • Biddle Law Library located on campus on the 3100 block of Sansom Street at the School of Law
  • Chemistry Library located on campus on 3400 block of Spruce Street in the Chemistry Building
  • Dental Medicine Library on campus on the 4100 the block of Locust Street at the Dental School
  • Fisher Fine Arts Library located on campus on the 3400 block of Woodland Avenue
  • Holman Biotech Commons library located on campus on the 3500 block of Hamilton Walk adjacent to the Robert Wood Johnson Pavilion at the Medical School and the Nursing School
  • Humanities and Social Sciences Library, including Weigle Information Commons, located on campus between 34th and 35th streets on Locust Street in the Van Pelt Library
  • Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies library located off campus at 420 Walnut Street near Independence Hall and Washington Square
  • Lea Library, a collection of Catholic Church history, located on campus between 34th and 35th streets on Locust Street on the 6th floor of the Van Pelt Library
  • Lippincott Business Library located on campus between 35th and 36th streets on Locust Street in the second floor of the Van Pelt Library
  • Math/Physics/Astronomy library located on campus on 3300 block of Walnut Streets adjacent to The Palestra on the third floor of the David Rittenhouse Laboratory
  • Rare Books and Manuscripts library and Yarnall Library of Theology located on campus between 34th and 35th streets on Locust Street in Van Pelt Library
  • Veterinary Medicine Library located on the campus between 35th and 36th streets on Sansom Street at the Veterinary Medicine School with satellite library located off campus at New Bolton Center.
Penn also maintains books and records off campus at their high-density storage facility.
The Penn Design School's Fine Arts Library was built to be Penn's main library and the first with its own building. The main library at the time was designed by Frank Furness to be first library in nation to separate the low ceilings of the library stack, where the books were stored, from forty-foot-plus high ceilinged rooms, where the books were read and studied.
The Yarnall Library of Theology, a major American rare book collection, is part of Penn's libraries. The Yarnall Library of Theology was formerly affiliated with St. Clement's Church in Philadelphia. It was founded in 1911 under the terms of the wills of Ellis Hornor Yarnall and Emily Yarnall, and subsequently housed at the former Philadelphia Divinity School. The library's major areas of focus are theology, patristics, and the liturgy, history and theology of the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. It includes a large number of rare books, incunabula, and illuminated manuscripts, and new material continues to be added.