Martin Luther King Jr. was a student at Crozer Theological Seminary from 1948 to 1951,[2] being elected student body president[3] and graduating with a Bachelor of Divinity degree.[4]
In 1970, the seminary merged with the Rochester Theological Seminary, forming the
Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in
Rochester, New York and the seminary's Old Main building was subsequently used as office space by Crozer Hospital (now part of the
Crozer-Chester Medical Center.) The Old Main building is a three-story, F-shaped,
stucco-coated stone building with three pavilions connected by a corridor with flanking rooms. Each of the pavilions is topped by a gable roof and
cupola, the largest cupola being on the central pavilion.[5] The seminary's grounds are now the
Crozer Arboretum.
Crozer allowed the
Union army to use the building as a hospital during the Civil War. The hospital contained a thousand beds and accommodated 300 nurses, attendants and guards. The patients were almost exclusively Union soldiers except for after the
battle of Gettysburg, in July 1863, when the number of wounded and sick
Confederate army soldiers left on the battlefield required their acceptance at the hospital. During the war, more than 6,000 patients were treated. Many of the dead from the hospital were some of the first burials at nearby
Chester Rural Cemetery.[9]
After the war, the building was repossessed by Crozer and subsequently sold to Colonel Theodore Hyatt for use as the
Pennsylvania Military Academy until 1868.[10][11]
Crozer died in 1866. When Old Main was vacated by the Pennsylvania Military Academy his family converted the school to the Crozer Theological Seminary in his honor. His son recruited faculty for the new mission,[12] It served as an
American Baptist Church school, training seminarians for entry into the
Baptistministry from 1868 to 1970. [13] Henry G. Watson was named its first President in 1869.
The multi-acre campus contains the
Crozer Arboretum and the following buildings:
Humpstone
President's House
Pollard House
CHEC
Evans House
Crozer Hall
Neisser House
Lewis House
Vedder House
Davis House
Sunnyside House
Westin House
Franklin House
Pearl Hall
Pearl Hall is a
serpentine stone library on the campus which opened on June 4, 1871.[15] The building was sponsored by
William Bucknell, the benefactor of
Bucknell University, in memory of his late wife Margaret Crozer, the daughter of John Price Crozer. In addition to the $30,000 cost of the building, Bucknell also gave $25,000 for the cost of books and $10,000 for an endowment fund.[16]
J. Pius Barbour, pastor of
Calvary Baptist Church in Chester, Pennsylvania, executive director of the National Baptist Association, editor of the National Baptist Voice, mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., first African-American graduate of Crozer Theological Seminary
John Warren Davis, New Jersey politician and federal judge, taught Greek and Hebrew at Crozer Theological Seminary for three years
^Nojeim, Michael J. (2004). Gandhi and King: The Power of Nonviolent Resistance. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 179. ISBN 0-275-96574-0
^Frady, Marshall (2002). Martin Luther King Jr.: A Life. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-303648-7.
^Downing, Frederick L. (1986). To See the Promised Land: The Faith Pilgrimage of Martin Luther King, Jr. Mercer University Press. p. 150. ISBN 0-86554-207-4