Philanthropic Hall
(ca. 1850)
The home of one of two historic Davidson College student organizations, the Philanthropic Hall was an early center of student life at the College.
216 N Main St, Davidson, NC 28036
From the earliest days of Davidson College until the turn of the twentieth century, the College’s student life and government centered around the Philanthropic and Eumenean debating societies. Formed shortly after the Eumenean Society, the Philanthropic Society held its first meeting on June 22, 1857, less than four months after the new College opened. The group grew to thirty members within its first year. For many years, the Philanthropic Society held its meetings in the College chapel, while the Eumenean Society met in a campus classroom.
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Secret and formal in nature, both the Philanthropic and Eumenean Societies were primarily debating organizations, but both also maintained strict rules governing the behavior of their members, imposing fines for fighting, swearing, intoxication, and "lying to the faculty." Because nearly all Davidson students were members of one society or the other, the societies factored prominently in the College’s daily life. Both provided extensive libraries and, until 1913, participated in the selection and payment of the commencement speakers.
In November 1842, the members of the Eumenean Society decided to construct their own “Society Hall." A committee from the Philanthropic Society, who also wished to build a hall, met with the Eumeneans to confer about the design of the two buildings. The groups agreed that the halls should be “alike in site, material, and magnificence.” Construction on the Greek Revival styled halls began shortly after selection of the sites on December 14, 1848, under the supervision of contractors Daniel Alexander and Lewis Dinkins (who also built the Helper Hotel building across Statesville Road from the campus during his work on Philanthropic Hall). The two halls were designed to complete the open-ended quadrangle plan of the school’s campus. Their forms and positions at the ends of the quadrangle, with one-story dormitory "rows" between them and the axial Chapel, give the campus an arrangement similar to the more elaborate quadrangle at the University of Virginia, designed by Thomas Jefferson.
Philanthropic Hall was dedicated on February 16, 1850, about three months after the dedication of Eumenean Hall. Member of the Philanthropic Society enlisted the assistance of Hanson Pinkney Helper, owner of the Helper Hotel, to go to New York to purchase furniture for the new structure. The chandelier in Philanthropic Hall is reportedly a duplicate of the one under which Napoleon III was married in 1853. According to an 1876 account, the duplicate was "exhibited at the Royal Palace in London in 1851, and afterwards sent to New York and exhibited there in the Crystal Palace in 1853." The New York exhibition failed, and the chandelier was sold to defray the debts from the exhibition.
Toward the end of the 1800s and increasingly in the early 1900s, the debating societies’ influence waned, as evidenced by the student body’s 1895 decision to change the school’s official colors from pink and blue (the traditional colors of the Eumenean and Philanthropic societies, respectively) to crimson and black as Davidson College's official colors. By 1920, the membership of the two societies included only thirty-five percent of the College’s total student population. Although no longer predominant in student life, both groups continue as literary societies, using their original halls and providing a link with the early years of Davidson College.