History
Founded in 1821 as a preparatory school for boys in Wilmington, Delaware, the institution now known as Widener University moved to Pennsylvania in 1862, and was granted collegiate powers and privileges via universal charter by the Pennsylvania legislature in April of that year. It was known from 1892 to 1972 as Pennsylvania Military College, though it had officially become PMC Colleges in 1966 when a nonmilitary, coeducational component was added. In 1972, the name Widener College was adopted after the prominent Widener family of Philadelphia, and the Corps of Cadets disbanded (an Army ROTC program still exists). Graduate programs were introduced in 1966 and the School of Law acquired in 1975.
In recognition of its comprehensive offerings, Widener College became Widener University in 1979. Today, Widener is a four-campus university offering more than 80 programs of study.
The Old Main and Chemistry Building were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
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“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)