Governer Pennypacker’s desk resides on the first floor of Drexel Library after being moved from the University City campus. PHOTO: ZACH PODOLNICK ’26/THE HAWK
On the first floor of Drexel Library tucked against a wall behind study tables is a wooden secretary desk that belonged to Pennsylvania’s 23rd governor, Samuel Pennypacker.
Pennypacker served as Pennsylvania’s governor from 1903 to 1907.
The desk, which dates from the late Victorian period or early 20th century, is made from a mixture of quarter sawn and straight sawn oak wood, said Carmen Croce ’71, university relations liaison. Croce is the former director of St. Joe’s University Press and curator of the university’s art collection.
The desk opens to a writing surface, eight drawers and 13 additional storage compartments. A glass-doored bookcase sits on top of it.
Pennypacker was born in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, and received a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and an honorary LL.B. from Franklin and Marshall College. He also served for the Union in the Civil War, engaging in battle at Gettysburg. His 1902 campaign was typical of Republican Progressives at the time.
“He’s a candidate who was, you know, he’s admirable,” said Randall Miller, Ph.D., professor emeritus of history. “He doesn’t have too much baggage.”
As governor, Pennypacker established the Pennsylvania State Police (the first statewide police force) and the Pennsylvania Department of Highways. He also signed child labor laws, vetoed a compulsory sterilization law, oversaw construction of a new state capitol building and passed a controversial bill in 1903 that made it a crime for newspaper cartoonists to depict political figures as animals (he had been mocked as a parrot). The law was repealed as soon as Pennypacker left office.
“When you just look at what he did in one term, it’s really quite remarkable,” Miller said.
On the right side of the desk is a small brass plaque that reads: “Governor Pennypacker’s original desk with the bookcases given to the college by Ivor Griffith.”
The desk used to sit in the president’s office suite in Griffith Hall on University City campus. It was moved to Drexel Library in late summer after the office was cleaned out.
Dr. Ivor Griffith, the pharmacist for whom Griffith Hall was named, served as president of Pennsylvania’s Board of Health, an institution which Pennypacker created.
St. Joe’s library staff plan to raffle off the use of the desk to a St. Joe’s student, according to Leslie Carey, St. Joe’s archivist. The idea is to choose a new student each semester to use the desk as an alternative place to study.
Miller said the former governor’s desk is a valuable piece of history that provides a tangible glimpse into the past. Miller called it “the power of the real.”
“You can imagine him sitting at a desk and writing a veto message,” Miller said. “You can imagine him commuting somebody’s sentence. Having the desk, it literally puts you there with Pennypacker … it puts you there imagining what’s going on. And there’s that deep sense of connection.”