Founder's Hall at Girard College

Founder’s Hall, the centerpiece of Girard College, is one of the nation’s most conspicuous examples of the Greek Revival. A complete peripteral temple, its 55-foot Corinthian columns are of white marble from Chester County. 

Girard College was created by the bequest of Stephen Girard (1750- 1831) a merchant and banker who was the wealthiest man in America. Born in Bordeaux, he made a fortune as a sea captain and trader before arriving in Philadelphia in 1776. In his will, Girard left most of his estate to the citizens of Philadelphia, including $6 million (equivalent to about $222 million in 2025) for the education of “poor, white male orphans.” His will detailed every aspect of the school’s architecture and operations.

The city conducted an architectural competition in late 1832 that attracted eighteen entrants, including most of the leading designers from Boston, New York and Philadelphia.  The judging was by the bicameral city council, who voted by a slim margin to favor the relatively inexperienced Thomas Ustick Walter (1804-1887) over his former employer, William Strickland.

The trustees of the new school elected Nicholas Biddle (1786-1844), another banker, as their president. An ardent admirer of Greek culture, he disparaged Walter’s design, which was based on the church of the Madeleine and the Place de la Concorde in Paris, as “a large showy building, wanting simplicity + purity.” He insisted on revisions, which were quickly made, and construction began in May 1833. But the work proceeded slowly, and Founder’s Hall and the four simpler dormitories that Walter designed to flank it were not opened until January 1, 1848.  

Girard College offered Biddle the opportunity to create a model for a national system of education, and a competition for its curriculum was conducted in tandem with the architectural contest. The adopted model was strongly shaped by European examples, in which the study of science and modern languages had been elevated.

In the twentieth century, the specification of “poor, white male orphans” in Girard’s will made his school the center of a historic fourteen-year civil rights struggle, spearheaded by Raymond Pace Alexander and Cecil B. Moore. Alexander’s 1954 lawsuit on behalf of six black students who had been denied admission ended in 1957 with a Supreme Court ruling that allowed the school to recharter itself as a private institution. This protected it from desegregation mandates as they were then interpreted. The struggle was resumed and won by Moore, who organized seven and a half months of daily protests outside the wall of the school in 1965. This encouraged the city and state to file a new lawsuit against the college, and the Supreme Court ruled this time that private institutions could not discriminate. The first black students were admitted in 1968, and the admission of girls came in 1984.