page_title: Lafayette College
section_title: Academic facilities
hierarchical_section_title: Lafayette College / Campus / Academic facilities
caption_attribution_description: English: A photo from a campus tour of Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, on May 31, 2012 (correct date; 2011-06-01 is incorrect).
context_page_description: Lafayette College is a private liberal arts college based in Easton, Pennsylvania, with a small satellite campus in New York City. Founded in 1826 by James Madison Porter and other citizens in Easton, the school first held classes in 1832. The founders voted to name the school after General Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution who toured the country in 1824–25, as "a testimony of respect for [his] talents, virtues, and signal services... in the great cause of freedom".
  Lafayette is considered a Hidden Ivy as well as one of the northeastern Little Ivies.
  Located on College Hill in Easton, the campus is in the Lehigh Valley, about 70 mi west of New York City and 60 mi north of Philadelphia. Lafayette College guarantees campus housing to all enrolled students. The school requires students to live in campus housing unless approved for residing in private off-campus housing, or at home as a commuter.
  The student body, consisting entirely of undergraduates, comes from 46 U.S. states and territories and nearly 60 countries.
context_section_description: Williams Center for the Arts is the college's performing arts center. Completed in 1983, the building houses the Performance Series, the Williams Art Gallery and College Collections, the College Theater program, the departments of Art and Music, and the student-led Arts Society. The centerpiece of the Williams Center is the 400-seat theater/concert hall and also contains a versatile art gallery, a 100-seat black box theater, and classrooms and studios for music and art.
  Pardee Hall, funded by Ario Pardee and completed in 1873, is one of the earliest buildings constructed at Lafayette College. When initially constructed, it was one of the largest academic buildings of its era. Pardee was designed to hold all of the science programs. Today it is used for most of Lafayette's humanities and social science departments.
  
  The Kirby Hall of Civil Rights was constructed in the late 1920s between the First World War and the Great Depression. The cost of the building was donated by Kirby. The design was "rumored to be per square foot the most expensive building of its day." Lafayette selected the architectural firm Warren and Wetmore, known for their projects of designing the New York Yacht Club, the Biltmore Hotel (New York) and Grand Central Station. The building's exterior embraces styles of Republic Rome, the Renaissance, 17th English classicism, and Beaux-Arts. The interior lobby area contains broad staircases and is constructed of travertine marble. The building currently houses the Government and Law department. Students have access to the Kirby library, which has 20-foot ceilings and oak-paneled book cases. 
  Markle Hall, now the main administrative building, holding Offices of Admissions and Financial Aid, was designed as the Hall of Mining Engineering. The College's Special Collections maintains an online historical overview of all the campus buildings.
  The David Bishop Skillman library, built in 1961, is the main library on campus; the Simon Wing was added in 1986, and a $22 million renovation and expansion was completed in 2004. The library contains over 500,000 volumes in its collections and subscribes to thousands of magazines, journals, and newspapers in the electronic and paper format. In addition, the college's Special Collections and College Archives holds materials and displays holdings related to the Marquis de Lafayette. Reading and study areas and computer labs are available to the students.
caption: Pardee Hall
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