Oranges to Apples

Oranges to Apples

In 1966, a milestone was reached as Matheson Hall - the new College of Business Administration building - opened, completing the quad between Market and Chestnut streets, and 32nd and 33rd streets.

True to its roots as a gritty, no-nonsense urban school, Drexel’s quad was no patch of grass for tossing the Frisbee in the sunshine. Indeed, the first-ever recorded reference to a “quad” in The Triangle appears in an editorial begging then-president Bill Hagerty for less concrete and orange bricks and more grass.

Drexel grew and grew in the 1970s and 1980s, adding many classrooms and beds, most of them similarly garbed in orange brick. From Towers and Kelly halls in the northwestern edge of campus to the CAT building and Disque in the opposite corner, these tangerine towers stood as steadfast sentinels of an ethos characterized by a student in 1965 as dedicated to “the uninspired, the effete and the humdrum.” That era ended with the arrival of Constantine Papadakis in 1995. The changes of the last two decades are clear: While we may not have much grass (can you remember the last time you saw a Frisbee in flight?), our new buildings now wear glass and steel.

And the stragglers are getting a paint job, as oranges become apples.

Rob Sieczkiewicz, MS ’11, University Archivist, toils in the basement of Hagerty Library, preserving the papers, photos, objects and emails that document the history of Drexel. He occasionally scurries out into the sunlight to snatch up records of historic value and drag them back into his underground lair.