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William Mohr was an artist from the town of Ridley Park, southwest of Philadelphia. Mineral Industries Building is an impressionistic view of the new home for the School of Mineral Industries. When Edward Steidle became dean of the School of Mines in 1929, he set out not just to reorganize the school under a new name, but also to provide a new building to bring together all the disparate elements of his program. Designed in 1930, the building, today known as Steidle Building, replaced the tar-papered Old Mining Building which had served as the home of the School of Mines since the first decade of the century.
The Mineral Industries Building was designed by Charles Z. Klauder, a Philadelphia architect. Klauder was the nation's most prominent collegiate architect of the 1920s and 1930s. He designed buildings for many campuses including the University of Delaware, Princeton University, the entire campus of the University of Colorado, and perhaps his most notable work, the Cathedral of Learning for the University of Pittsburgh. Klauder was responsible for many of Penn State's buildings as well, including Old Main, Pattee Library, Henderson, Sparks, Burroughs and the West Halls Dormitory Complex. With the addition of the Mineral Industries building to the Penn State campus, students of the School of Mineral Industries finally had adequate classrooms and laboratory space to pursue study in their chosen field.
Sources:
"William Mohr's Mineral Industries Building Added to Gallery," The New York Times, December 13, 1936.
This document copyright © 1996, Eric John Schruers