Inside the historic Quad’s multiyear renovation project.
When Mark Kocent C’82 GCP’91 GFA’91 arrived at Penn as a freshman, he lived in one of the highrises, which he found to be “very cool” coming from a small town outside Pittsburgh. The next two years he also had a “great experience” living in the historic Sigma Chi fraternity building on Locust Walk. But when he got his class ring, which was engraved with a picture of the venerable Quadrangle dormitories, Kocent felt like something was missing. “I thought, Wow, I never lived in the Quad,” he says. “So I applied to be an RA and lived there as a senior … not knowing at the time I would be there for eight more years after that.”
Over those nine years living in the Quad’s Ware College House—as a resident advisor (RA), graduate student, administrative fellow, and finally in a faculty apartment when his wife Linda Kocent Nu’84 GNu’88 joined the nursing faculty—he fell in love with the charm of what he calls one of Penn’s “most iconic assets.”
And now, as the University Architect, he oversaw a yearslong renovation project to ensure that the time-honored home for first-year Penn students will remain just as iconic for current and future generations of Quakers.
The goal of the three-phase renovation project, which began in 2023 and was completed this fall, “was not to change the feel of the place but really restore it as much as possible,” Kocent says. The scope ranged from replacing windows and roofs to improving the mechanical systems behind the scenes.
The University’s oldest residential facility, the Quad was designed in 1895 by architects and Penn faculty members Walter Cope and John Stewardson in the Collegiate Gothic style, inspired by England’s Oxford and Cambridge universities [“Old Penn,” Jan|Feb 2018]. But “what’s fascinating to me was that it was built over a period of almost 60 years,” says Kocent, noting that it wasn’t fully enclosed until the 1950s, with its unbroken architectural perimeter completely surrounding its famed inner courtyards. That meant that some of the Quad’s residence houses had different kinds of roofs and windows. The old chimneys and “famous steam tunnels” running under the two-block-long building also presented unique renovation challenges.
“The first priority is the envelope, so keeping water out is really important,” Kocent says, adding that with the tunnels and utility connections, “we were able to clean out a lot of antiquated equipment and upgrade it so it’s easier to access and maintain.” And although the chimneys and fireplaces are no longer in use, “they really stand out as part of the historic character of the building,” Kocent says. “So we spent a lot of money securing them structurally and then enclosing them at the top, so there was no water infiltration.”
For the renovations, the University hired the architectural firm Beyer Blinder Belle, led by Elizabeth Leber C’91, who had lived in the Quad. “So she understood the building and had a personal connection to it, which was nice,” says Kocent, noting that he worked closely with the architects as well as with the Philadelphia Historical Commission on things like matching the new window mullions as closely as possible to the old ones. There was also a lot of collaboration between Penn’s Facilities and Real Estate Services, Residential Services, and College Houses & Academic Services, which included community surveys that found that students wanted more indoor community spaces to match the outdoor ones that are the “best quality open spaces in any of our facilities,” Kocent says.
Inspired by that feedback, each of the Quad’s college houses—Fisher Hassenfeld, Riepe, and Ware—have been equipped with a shared kitchen, lounge, and seminar room. Three new elevators were also added to increase access to the community spaces in Memorial Tower (located at the main entrance to Upper Quad at 37th and Spruce), Provost Tower (on the eastern side at 36th and Spruce), and McClelland Hall (a central hub with a lounge and dining facility that’s situated between the Upper and Lower Quad). And in one of the most contemporary touches, a new skylight was installed just above McClelland on the Junior Balcony, which “adds a lot more natural light into the space,” Kocent says, adding that the architects also added planting and “built in the structural capacity for tents to be put on either side of the skylight” for events.
Bathrooms in the Quad were also expanded and redesigned for all-gender use. And all of the bedrooms were renovated, many of them with new flooring, doors, and furniture. “It’s really a significant upgrade to the whole building to bring it up to today’s standard,” Kocent says.
The upgrades should only enhance what has always made the Quad special for freshmen, believes Kocent, who calls the enclosed dorms a “protected little world” and “respite from the rest of the urban area, even the rest of campus.” The architect’s own Quad memories will endure too—from playing the guitar on his floor, to seeing Hall & Oates and the B-52s perform during Spring Fling, to chipping golf balls from the Upper Quad to the Lower Quad during the summer when the students were gone and “it felt like you were living in a castle.” And architecturally, he continues to admire both the scale of the complex and the little details like the gargoyles woven into rooflines and alcoves. One of his favorites, near the Lower Quad entrance on 36th Street, is “the head of a donkey holding up a little tablet that says architecture on it.”
Some of the Quad’s design has inspired newer dormitories, Kocent adds, noting that the private inner courtyards at Lauder College House and Gutmann College House echo aspects of the “Baby Quad” at the Quad’s eastern end. And while the University will continue to design modern new buildings, it will also reinvest in historic dorms like the Quad to ensure that it remains “in good working condition,” Kocent says, for decades to come. —DZ
