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2 businesses at this address since 1855

State College (borough)

State College, State College, PA

State College was officially incorporated as a borough in 1896, but the settlement itself began three decades earlier around a college nobody wanted to build.

📅 1896–present🏛️ OtherStill here
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State College (borough), State College, State College, PA
State College (borough), State College (2022) · JohnDziak, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The story

The land at these coordinates—downtown State College—was farmland owned by various Centre County families (Krumrine, Foster, Hartswick) until 1855, when ironmaster James Irvin donated 200 acres to the Pennsylvania Agricultural Society for the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania. The school opened in 1859 with 69 students in a single limestone building called Main Building. For the next two decades, very little existed around it; an 1883 photograph of downtown shows only a few scattered houses and no civic infrastructure. Between 1890 and 1896, rapid college expansion and population growth forced farmland to be subdivided for residential, commercial, and fraternity buildings. The settlement received official borough status on August 29, 1896, transforming from an ad-hoc hamlet into a municipality. The downtown that emerged along College Avenue and surrounding streets was built almost entirely to serve Penn State (renamed from the Farmers' High School in 1874, then to Pennsylvania State University in 1953). Early downtown buildings included the Hotel State College (1857, expanded 1906), the Tavern (1892 as boarding house, later a bakery and restaurant), and various commercial blocks dating to the early 1900s. Downtown continues to evolve, with recent developments like The Metropolitan (2018) replacing older structures at the Atherton-College intersection.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

Before 1856, there was no semblance of a town where State College now stands—the land was divided among six farmers, with James Irvin controlling most of it through his Centre Furnace iron operation.
The original Main Building (1855) was built of limestone and functioned as classroom, dormitory, dining hall, and recreation facility all in one; it was demolished in 1929 and replaced by the current Old Main.
State College was so isolated in 1859 that it was more than five miles from the nearest town; the surrounding meadows were filled with limestone rocks and boulders, forcing early students to help clear the land.
The college itself was in Harris Township and University Park until the borough of State College incorporated in 1896, creating the administrative separation that still exists today.

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Maker's Mark Distillery

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Explore the full web of connections on the map.

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