Sisters' legacy holds special place in Messiah's history
It’s the 1940s. You walk out of Old Main and pass two women. Their warm and welcoming personalities greet you as the younger pushes the older in a wheelchair. You just passed Clara and Mary Hoffman, otherwise known as the Hoffman sisters, two very important women in the history of Messiah College.
Return to the present and check out the Hoffman Building at the center of campus. Remember those women? This is their story.
In Morris Sider’s “Messiah College: A History,” the sisters are said to be “as much a part of the campus as the buildings and trees themselves.” In fact, the Hoffman Building, situated between Murray Library and the Eisenhower Campus Center, was the first building to be named after women in College history.
Mary, the younger of the two sisters, worked as a curator for the Archives of Messiah College and the Brethren in Christ Historical Library Archives. She taught in local schools before coming to Messiah. According to Sider, she wrote articles praising women who entered any career formerly occupied by men. Clara, the elder sister, worked as the College’s first librarian. Sider says she possessed a forceful personality, a keen sense of where trouble might be brewing and yet a warm heart.
Originally a women’s residence hall, Hoffman opened in 1949, a symbol of the progress and success of Messiah College. The campus master plan originally presented an option that a new welcome center could be added to a renovated Hoffman. However, the Board of Trustees commissioned a study in 2017 and found—due to the building’s age and renovation limitations—it would be more cost-effective to build a new freestanding facility for the admissions and welcome center and raze Hoffman.
Removing Hoffman and then building the new admissions center closer to the circle of Eisenhower Campus Center also will allow the College to meet the master plan’s goal of creating a larger, centrally located “green space” in the middle of campus. Toward this goal, the College is planning to relocate the parking currently in the circle of Boyer Hall, Hostetter Chapel, Murray Library and Hoffman Hall. The campus will stay parking-space neutral, but parking will be relocated to various places in conjunction with township governance and planning.
The College will identify an opportunity as a part of the admissions center project to continue to recognize the legacy of these two important sisters of the Messiah community. As Sider wrote in his book, “[The Hoffman sisters] served always at tremendous sacrifice of money and time, but, to judge from the record and oral testimony, without complaint.”
— Jake Miaczynski ’20