HUB-Robeson Center - The Campus Living Room
Photo: George Chriss, CC BY 2.5 (cropped)
A stop on Penn State University Park Campus Walk, a free self-guided tour.
End at the HUB-Robeson Center, the busiest building on campus, where students meet, eat, study and run their clubs. It opened in 1955 as the Hetzel Union Building, named for Ralph Dorn Hetzel, Penn State's president from 1927 to 1947, and was dedicated on February 22, 1955, the university's 100th birthday.
In 1999, after a large expansion, the Paul Robeson Cultural Center moved inside, and the building took its present name. Robeson, the singer, actor, scholar and civil rights activist, had been honored by Penn State's students since the 1980s, when the university's first center for minority student life was named for him.
Walk inside to the first floor and look for a glass case holding the skeleton of Old Coaly, the mule who hauled the stone for the first Old Main. You have come full circle: Old Main is just a short walk west of here across the lawn.
Getting here: Walk south across campus from the Creamery, about 8 minutes, to the HUB on the open lawn east of Old Main.
Did you know?: Old Coaly's skeleton moved into the HUB in 2004; before that it had been kept in several campus buildings, including the original Old Main.
Photo op: From the HUB lawn, frame the building's glass front with students crossing the lawn on a busy afternoon.
More on Wikipedia: HUB-Robeson Center · Paul Robeson · Ralph D. Hetzel · Old Coaly
Stops on this tour
- Old Main - Where the Farmers' High School Began
- Allen Street Gates - Where Town Meets Gown
- Old Botany Building - A Survivor from 1887
- Pattee Mall - The Great Elm Walk
- Nittany Lion Shrine - The Lion Everyone Lines Up For
- Pattee and Paterno Libraries - The Heart of Study
- Palmer Museum of Art - Art in the Arboretum
- Beaver Stadium - A City on Game Day
- Berkey Creamery - Ice Cream with a Pedigree
- HUB-Robeson Center - The Campus Living Room