The Hintz Family Alumni Center—a 43,000 square foot facility—is designed as a home away from home for Penn State’s 400,000 alumni. It also houses the offices of the Penn State Alumni Association, the largest dues-paying alumni association in the country. The Center is significant for alumni—it marks the first time that alumni have a presence on the University Park campus. The building was dedicated in April, 2001. It cost $9.5 million, all of which was privately funded by more than 430 donors.

In 1998, the Board of Trustees approved plans for the house’s next life as the Hintz Family Alumni Center. Penn State alums Thomas Purdy ’83 A&A and Linda O’Gwynn ’76 A & A, from Purdy O’Gwynn Barnhart Architects, were approved to design the Center. Tom and Linda, met in the architecture studios overlooking University House and its grounds, and were later married.

When the architects developed the Center’s plans, they took the Home’s historical significance and sentiment into consideration. The Alumni Center roots itself in the historic campus fabric by the alignment of its front door, Entry Hall, and the central fireplace with the University Park campus axis. The axis is an imaginary line drawn by architect Charles Klauder, who designed many of the buildings you see around the Center in the 1920s and ’30s. The axis starts at Irwin Hall, runs down through the West Halls Quad, through the Earth and Mineral Sciences Building (Steidle) main entrance, and through the main entrance of Electrical Engineering West. Aligning the Center’s front entrance with the axis was the architects way of paying homage to Klauder.

Just like the alignment of the Center, its architectural design is a blending of tradition—the old and new. Both limestone and brick in the new lodge-like addition marry into the site’s surroundings. The essence of the Hintz Family Alumni Center in the words of Purdy O’Gwynn Barnhart Architects, Inc.—“The building that honors returning alumni should express this duality:respect for tradition and engagement in the future.”

There are three working fireplaces throughout the building made up of different materials: limestone in Robb Hall, reflecting the building material of University House; brick at the end of the conference room, echoing the brick of the historic core of campus. And the most intimate in scale, in blue and white tile (located at the entrance to the Center).

The four stanzas of the Alma Mater are located throughout the building. The first stanza is in Robb Hall; second, at the entrance; third, at the end of the conference room; and the last stanza is engraved in the flagstone as you leave…a gentle reminder to our alums.

In keeping with the theme of melding alums with current students, the design calls for the removal of the stockade fences around the house, to encourage a free flow of student traffic through the facility.

The south and west facades of the Center are built in brick to relate to surrounding campus buildings such as Sackett and Electrical Engineering West. The brick type and color is closely matched to the old brick of campus, as is the same Flemish bond pattern.