IUP By the Numbers

Preserve, Conserve, Use

By Karen Gresh

Two years ago, thanks to a $200,000 Getty Foundation grant, IUP became one of four regional universities included in Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation’s second Western Pennsylvania Campus Heritage Study. In company with California, Seton Hill, and Washington & Jefferson, IUP welcomed PHLF study teams to campus.

The outcome of the study was a plan, unveiled early this past summer, which addressed the preservation, conservation, and continued use of the historic landscape and buildings of IUP. Attention was concentrated on the oldest buildings in the oldest part of the campus: Sutton, Clark, Waller, Fisher, Wilson, McElhaney, Leonard, Keith, Breezedale, Whitmyre, and Uhler.

Readers can find the entire hundred-page PDF report, lavishly illustrated, at the IUP Libraries Special Collections and Archives site: (Scroll down to Preservation Plan of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2009. Warning: It’s easy to be waylaid by a variety of interesting links listed here.)

In general, the report gave the university high marks: “The historic buildings of Indiana University of Pennsylvania have been sensitively maintained with past alterations and additions, which have generally respected the historic character of each building. The university’s oldest structures, Breezedale and John Sutton Hall, have been preserved with almost all of their original historic character intact.”