Helping a campus landmark rediscover its purpose
Learn how a redesign helped Lehigh University’s most famous building find its way again.
Exterior of Lehigh University’s Packer Hall, Bethlehem, PA.
Set high on the north slope of South Mountain overlooking downtown Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Lehigh University’s Packer Hall strikes an imposing form. Made up of a heavy stone mass and a stately bell tower, the building is part Victorian gothic, a little French Second Empire, a dash Moorish, and as it stands now — at more than 150 years old — iconically Lehigh.
As the first building constructed on campus, completed in 1868, the building (now known as the Clayton University Center at Packer Hall) has been the center of life at Lehigh since its inception, housing everything from a chapel to dorms to classrooms. While its uses may have shifted over the years, its importance to Lehigh students, staff, and alumni has not.
Yet for as important as the building itself is to the Lehigh identity, over the years its usability had waned. Per a university announcement at the outset of its renovation, it had become more of a pass-through than a destination for students, plagued by cramped, outdated facilities and a dim, dark interior.
Thanks to a capital campaign and a generous donation from longtime benefactors of the university, Kevin and Lisa Clayton, that was all about to change.
Packer Hall had undergone one major renovation since its original 19th century completion, a 1950s reworking that added a three-story addition to the building’s south side, gutted much of the interior, and replaced many of the building’s original windows with double-hung units, many including screens, muntin bars, and storm windows. These changes were perfectly fine for the time, but they reduced some of the available natural light to the already dark and wood-heavy interior.
So, with this latest renovation, the goals were to bring light and openness to the building, make it an inviting space — a destination — and hopefully transform a vital location in the Lehigh student experience.
To accomplish this, the Lehigh planning team knew they needed a whole host of changes that would reimagine the building. Upgrades included creating a large campus “living room,” adding a variety of new food and dining options, and carving out club spaces for student organizations, as well as making more practical, foundational improvements like mechanical system upgrades and adding an open stairway between the second and third floors. Finally, to help achieve the light and openness goal, along with vastly improved energy efficiency and durability, adding all new windows.
“We knew that windows were going to be one of the most critical pieces of this renovation. It's something you have to get right,” said Jim LaRose, Lehigh Facilities lead project manager. “It's the first thing everyone sees when they look at the building.”
Shepley Bulfinch, a national architecture firm with five offices from Boston to Phoenix, led the renovation and redesigns, with Architect and Principal Bob Mohr, AIA, acting as lead designer.
Many of the building’s architectural details had been blunted in the 1950s renovation, so for Mohr, restoring and refocusing the historic character and provenance of the building was one of his main goals. One way he was able to achieve this? With the aid of the building’s many windows — more than 200 units of more than 20 different types and styles — from its trademark “candle windows” (complete with a tiny, single-pane glass “flame”) to the main floor’s massive, light-capturing double-arched units, some as large as 7 feet wide by almost 15 feet tall. These windows in particular feature a more ecclesiastic design (a look that is quite common in the Lehigh Valley, Mohr pointed out), employing a vertical center mullion and two twin arches, rather than the more well-known gothic-style single diamond top.