Girard College history

The area, annexed to the city in 1854, no longer appeared to be rural in the mid-nineteenth century, as the city’s row houses and fac­tories had begun sprawling northward.

Philadelphia: Girard College, 1923.

Philadelphia: Girard College, 1927.

Philadelphia: Girard College, 1942.

We, the Class of June 1944, are reluctant to leave this, our home and school, for the passing school years have knit our hearts very close to Girard College.

Girard College was ordered to desegregate by the United States Supreme Court's 1954 unanimous decision.

Cecil B. Moore and the Philadelphia Freedom Fighters marched around the wall encompassing the campus for seven months in 1965.

The first four African-American male students were finally admitted on September 11, 1968.

Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976.

The admission of girls came in 1984 and was less contested, but perhaps ultimately a bigger shift in school culture, as Girard College transitioned from all-male to co-ed.

In 1990 the school’s invest­ment portfolio was worth one hundred and sixty million dollars – not including the value of city-owned property whose leases and rents pro­vide income to support the school.

The first young women graduated with a Girard diploma in 1993.

The graduating Class of 1996 was the first class to graduate with more female students than males, although it remains more or less balanced from year to year.

The College made history in May 2009, when it named Autumn Adkins as its 16th president, the first female chief administrator in its (then) 160-year existence.