Former students of the closed Ellis College in Newtown Square will gather there this weekend to relive a special time in their lives. The college, known 100 years ago as the Charles E. Ellis College for Fatherless Girls, closed in the late 1970s, writes Joseph N. DiStefano for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Ellis College was started by a rich public-transit contractor who left behind his fortune to build the charity boarding school, home to around 300 middle school and high school girls.

Enrollment was limited to white, fatherless children. The school started admitting African-American girls in 1970, but closed seven years later.

Alumnae get together every five years. This year’s reunion at the school is organized by Lucy Cascioli, a nursing clinical educator at Lehigh Valley Hospital. She and other graduates will meet and look for familiar traces of the fields and gardens on the redeveloped campus before adjourning to Springfield Country Club.

“They would call Ellis ‘the experiment,’ perhaps because it was for girls,” said Carolyn Aderson Kilgour, a retired university instructor.

Cascioli appreciated the school’s stability. “It was a protective environment,” she said.

Read more about Ellis College in The Philadelphia Inquirer by clicking here.

[uam_ad id=”80503″]

.

[uam_ad id=”80502″]