Penn State Altoona
campus of Pennsylvania State University
Penn State Altoona is a public satellite campus of Pennsylvania State University located in Logan Township, Pennsylvania. It is one of four four-year institutions in the university's Commonwealth Campus network. The full-time student count was 2,577 in 2023.
History
In 1939, a citizen's committee led by the Altoona Chamber of Commerce Chairman at the time convinced Ralph D. Hetzel, president of the Pennsylvania State College, to support an undergraduate center in Altoona. In July, the citizen's committee launched a campaign to raise money to renovate an abandoned grade school building to house the new center. More than $5,000 was raised from 8,000 local contributors in two months. The college, named the Altoona Undergraduate Center, opened its doors to just 119 freshmen and nine faculty members.
By 1946, it was clear that the campus population was going to continue to grow and expansion of the campus was imminent. The purchase of the 38 acres of the defunct Ivyside Amusement Park was made for $40,000. The park had been closed in 1944 due to "the war and gas rationing." Properties in the surrounding areas were continued to be purchased totaling over 100 acres by the 1990s.
“Penn State Altoona” enters the record as campus of Pennsylvania State University. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Penn, State and Altoona can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Penn State Altoona” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Penn, State and Altoona provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7163226. VIAF identifies the subject as 138707961. The Library of Congress control number is no2002021558. Authority coordinates are 40.539, -78.406. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2023, 1939, 1946 and 1944.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Penn State Altoona”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Penn State Altoona primary sources, Penn State Altoona archive and Penn research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Penn State Altoona”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Penn State Altoona” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.