“About 13 or 14 years ago, my life was about to change,” began Dr. Richard Hart as he addressed a room of attentive listeners in the Metzgar Center on Tuesday afternoon, “although I didn’t know it at the time.”
The life-changing event that brought Dr. Hart to this place began when he was notified that there were a substantial number of files in the Pennsylvania State Archives involving Mr. and Mrs. Ernst and Mary Behrend that had not been properly researched or publicized. Having a vested interest in the history of Penn State Behrend and its founders, Hart, the Director Emeritus of the John M. Lilley Library, found himself on a mission to piece together this new information.
That mission began when Hart began searching through files labeled under the name R. Brognard Okie in the state’s archives. Okie, an architect in the Philadelphia area, had been assigned the duty of constructing the Behrends’ estate in the late 1920s.
Because of the distance between the planned Erie estate and Okie’s Philadelphia base of operations, there were thousands of letters that corresponded every minute detail regarding the property. Because of Okie’s significant work and important clientele, which included the Behrends, all of these letters were preserved.
Sifting through the letters, Hart began to piece together an untold origin story of the Glenhill Farm estate that still sits at the core of Penn State Behrend’s campus. While he knew he had made a significant breakthrough, Hart did not initially know what his findings would evolve into.
“I did not envision writing a book,” said Hart. “I thought I had enough for a nice pamphlet, about 25 pages. But the notes kept on piling up.”
What came of Hart’s notes led to the publication of “Glenhill Farm: The History of a Family Estate.” As Hart read and analyzed passages from his book at the event, a slideshow mixed the present with the past to bring the findings in “Glenhill Farm” to life.
The journey began in the 1920s, when the wealthy Behrend family sought to build an estate further away from the Hammermill Paper Company that Ernst Behrend helped found with his father and brothers in 1898. With plenty of expendable income and a desire to own a property that also served as a working farm, the Behrends bought eight adjacent properties and hired Okie to begin construction.
Harboring a desire to create a property that complemented its surrounding land, Okie was charged with constructing and remodeling buildings on the property in a Southern Pennsylvania colonial style that he had expertise in building.
According to Hart, there were numerous bumps in the road in the construction process, including delays caused by the lack of suitable building materials and the financial constraints caused by the Great Depression, which led to a large residence for the Behrends south of the Glenhill Farmhouse being scrapped from the final construction plans.
Nevertheless, what came from years of shared perfectionism from both the Behrends and Okie led to a masterful property which sprawled across the hills in southeast Erie. Equipped with sizable living accommodations, a swimming pool with an accompanying, acres of land and buildings that seemed to be sprouting from the ground more than being built into it, the Glenhill Farm was a creation to behold. Fortunately for the Behrends, they showed off Okie’s work through numerous gatherings at the estate.
Unfortunately for the Behrends, the well-planned estate did not serve the family for many years. Ernst Behrend died in 1941, just seven years after the farm was completed. Afterwards, Mary Behrend and her daughter spent less and less time on the property. After years of debating on what to do with the property, Mary Behrend took the philanthropic route and gifted the property to Penn State to form a new campus on Oct. 30, 1948.
Hart concluded his discussion on this note, and while furthering the discovery of Behrend’s history opened new avenues for him, his main takeaway from the experience was that more needs to be done to ensure information does not slip through the cracks of time.
“There was an institutional ignorance regarding the Okie files that led to a gaping hole in Behrend’s history,” said Hart. “Correcting that error was a motivation for me.”
Through his book reading and Q & A session, which landed on the 71st anniversary of Penn State Behrend’s founding, Hart succeeding in serving justice to history and providing another important insight into how Behrend has become what it is today.