She stood tall in the grass next to the main road. She stood only twenty-seven years old with each red brick still glued together like building a LEGO castle. Two white clock towers stacked on top were the final touches: one in the center and the other on the right. From top or side view, attached is a long hallway-like structure. But inside is a chapel with rows of benches and a golden organ in the front with a pastor’s stage in the center.
 

   On the left side of the building, white steps lead to the double door entrance. An entrance that leads to each carefully designed room. A room filled with books. A room to dine. Rooms to sleep and rooms to learn. There she stood ready for the adventures that followed.
 

   In 1866, the Keystone Normal School began with a building students and faculty now call Old Main. However, like all old buildings, Old Main has been renovated and contains stories whether they are rumors or the truth. Some parts of Old Main are longer here or have been altered.
 

   Opened in 1888, the long hallway-like wing attached behind Old Main is the Georgian Room. It served as a chapel for students and faculty to pray or go to church on Sundays. Today, the golden organ is no longer there nor the long wooden benches. Its purpose now is to hold events.
 

   However, across from the Georgian room is a building stationed behind Rothermel Hall. The Multicultural Center parted ways from Old Main in 2001. But it was first known as the Infirmary in 1908. The sickly, whether it was a virus or a common cold, and the injured from a broken leg to a concussion all came to the infirmary to heal. From healing the injured and sickly, it became a building of art in 1937 as Sharadin Studios. When Sharadin became the new art building beside Schaeffer, this house-like building became a student center in 1960. But the last thing it became before the Multicultural Center was the John B. Wright House in 1985. It was a place for international students to stay and call home. According to the Archives’ records, thirty-six students lived at the John B. Wright House.
 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

   There is a section of Old Main that is no longer there. When the university was the Keystone State Normal School there was an auditorium. All that remains are the windows in the F wing, and a dropped ceiling from when they made renovations.

 

   Kutztown University’s beloved Old Main continues to be modified, but the stories or rumors of the past stays the same. Often times things in the past remain in the past as the present keeps moving forward. However, the past remains either in rumors or something spiritual. Something that seems to come out of a R.L. Stein book or maybe a Tim Burton movie. 
 

   Yet, it is only the eeriness that Old Main brings. Perhaps it is the slow elevator, the echoing footsteps, or the basement in general that looks like it holds secret doors to unknown conspiracies or experiments. The secrets Old Main keeps are fascinating.
Students and faculty talk of Mary, the ghost of Old Main, but there was more than one death in Old Main like Grace Stone. She got caught in the elevator shaft on December 20, 1916. In the Kutztown Patriot, they explain that the Keystone State Normal School was doing everything they can to help. The school ended up taking her to the hospital in January 1917. Stone stayed in the hospital until July, and she was allowed to go home with trained nurses to help her. The school paid her medical bills, but Stone didn’t have feeling in her limbs. She later died from her injuries.
 

   As for Mary, she died in 1895 with inflammatory rheumatism or swelling in the brain. Today, students and faculty still talk of Mary’s death. Some talk of rumors, and some talk of the truth. Some say she was killed by a professor since she was pregnant or she died trying to get an abortion. But whether it is a rumored death or the truth, some students and faculty believe Mary still haunts the halls of Old Main.
 

   Perhaps it isn’t Mary haunting Old Main or maybe it is Miss Stone’s steps people hear. Or maybe it is someone else’s story that has yet to be discovered. Or maybe it is both trying to perhaps say something to the living or to keep on living themselves.
 

   Whether it is building changes or the supernatural, Old Main still stands. She is still built like a LEGO castle by the main road. After 154 years, she has experienced what we can’t see in our lifetime: 154 years of change. She has experienced everyone’s stories or at least a part of them. But she only sits and watches like time does collecting each story that is told.