page_title: Campus of Lafayette College
section_title: Kirby Hall of Civil Rights
hierarchical_section_title: Campus of Lafayette College / Academic buildings / Kirby Hall of Civil Rights
caption_attribution_description: English: Kirby Hall of Civil Rights , Warren and Wetmore, 1929-1930. Lafayette College, Easton Pennsylvania
context_page_description: The Lafayette College campus is a 110-acre suburban area located on College Hill in Easton, Pennsylvania. Lafayette College also owns and maintains a 230-acre athletic complex, the Metzgar Fields Athletic Complex, and leases a 1,500 square foot space in New York City. The school is roughly 70 mi west of New York City and 60 mi north of Philadelphia.
  The main campus borders the City of Easton to the south, the College Hill Residential Historic District to the north east, and is situated almost directly on the Delaware River.
context_section_description: The Kirby Hall of Civil Rights is home to Lafayette's Government and Law Department. It also houses Lafayette's second library, with a collection of over 30,000 volumes related to government and law. It was the first of many buildings to be named after philanthropist Fred Morgan Kirby after he made a donation of 1,000 shares of stock in the F. W. Woolworth Company, of which he was co-founder and vice-president. With each share valued at $100, this donation was worth $100,000 in total, though with the swelling of a bull market in the early 1920s the college ended up selling their shares for over $538,000. In 1921, Kirby had created an endowment for the Kirby Professorship in Civil Rights. By 1930, in an effort to grow the department, he donated an additional $590,000 (equivalent to $7,173,000 in 2018 dollars) to fund the construction of the Hall of Civil Rights. Upon its dedication, Kirby Hall was said to be one of the finest academic buildings on an American college campus.
  Construction of the Hall began on October 10, 1929 in the footprint of the old gymnasium which had been demolished to make room for its successor. The famed architectural group Warren and Wetmore were hired to construct the building in the Beaux-Arts style. The exterior of the building was built out of Indiana limestone and Woodbury granite, while the interior was decorated in travertine imported from Italy. An ornate oak-paneled library was constructed on the second floor, a large classroom placed on the first, with more classrooms constructed in the basement. Around the four walls of the exterior of the building the following inscriptions were carved in the stone: The front reads a line from the Gospel of Matthew, "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?" (Matthew 20:15), while the back reads a line of Herbert Spencer, "Every man is free to do that which he will provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." The north side of the building reads, "Every man is the architect of his own fortune" (Pseudo-Sallust), while the south reads a line from Ecclesiastes, "Whatever Thy hand findeth to do, do with it Thy might" (Ecclesiastes 9:10). Additionally, a bust of The Republic was placed over the front door. According to historians, the building was meant to be "one of the outstanding college buildings in America," and was rumored to be per square foot the most expensive building of its day. It's also purported to be the first college building of its time expressly made for the study of government and law, with press lauding it as a "practical step forward".
caption: Kirby Hall of Civil Rights
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