“The time is always right to do what is right.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Old Main is not a monument to the past — it is a launchpad. Imagine the halls where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. studied, reimagined as a living campus for history, learning, technology, and community.
Board 01 — Arrival
Entrance, historic building, bus exhibit, learning & gathering space
Board 02 — Inside Old Main
Dorms, media room, museum, garden, library & study lounge
Board 03 — Grounds & Wellness
Recreation, nature trail, meditation walk, student store & residency
Museum
Exhibits on Dr. King, Crozer & Chester
Library
Reading room open to students
AI & Media Lab
Digital skills & storytelling
Commons
Plaza for lectures & gatherings
Four rooms. Four ways the halls of Old Main come back to life. Choose a space and see what it becomes.
Space 01
Dr. King's Crozer years, Chester's own history, and the voices that carried the movement — gathered into permanent exhibits in the rooms where they happened.
Space 02
A reading room built for students again — quiet study by day, tutoring and lectures after school, and a searchable archive anyone can use.
Space 03
Where the next generation learns to tell its own story — podcasting, film, coding, and AI tools in a building that once trained a preacher to change the world.
Space 04
The front lawn and plaza become Chester's living room: summer lectures under the lights, farmers markets, celebrations, and space to simply be together.
Old Main holds more than one story. Artifacts, documents, photographs, and records across six collections will be catalogued, digitized, and made available — to researchers, students, and neighbors.
1948–1951. Application records, coursework, chapel notes, photographs, and letters from his three years at the seminary.
1857 to 1970. The institution's full arc — founders, faculty, theology, student life, and its eventual closure.
The war years as they touched this ground — enlistment, the home front, abolition, and emancipation in southeastern Pennsylvania.
The broader American story as it passed through this building — the long struggle for civil rights and equal protection under law.
The neighborhoods around Old Main — industry, immigration, churches, schools, and the people who built this city.
The reading room as a working research library — books, periodicals, and a digitized archive searchable from anywhere.
Open access. Every collection will be free to browse — on site in the reading room, and online for anyone researching Dr. King, Crozer, Chester, the Civil War, or American history.
“Injustice anywhere is
a threat to justice everywhere.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
This plaza is where the future of Old Main meets its community — string lights over the fountain, the domed hall behind, and those words still holding the whole thing together.
Preservation first, then programming. Each phase unlocks the next.
Phase 01
Roof, masonry, windows, and systems. The building has to be sound before anything else can be imagined inside it.
Phase 02
First exhibits and the portrait gallery open to the public. Tours begin for schools, churches, and neighbors.
Phase 03
The reading room reopens. Tutoring, lectures, and research hours give the building a daily heartbeat.
Phase 04
The AI & media lab opens and the plaza becomes a regular gathering place for the Chester community.
Restoring Old Main is a long project with concrete needs — funding, expertise, materials, and advocates. Every contribution moves one phase closer to opening.