The story
The Lake Erie Female Seminary was relocated to Painesville after Willoughby Seminary, founded in 1847, burned to the ground. Its founders include prominent local citizens Timothy Rockwell, general store owner Silas Trumbull Ladd, Judge William Lee Perkins, Mayor and Judge Aaron Wilcox, Charles Austin Avery and Judge Reuben Hitchcock, a president of the Cleveland and Mahoning Railroad and cousin of Edward Hitchcock.
Scholarship was not a chief concern at the Seminary in its earliest years, however. Educating future mothers through domestic work, physical education and etiquette ranked among the Seminary's chief aims. For a tuition of $160, seminarians were trained as teachers.
The Arts took up a home in the halls of Lake Erie. Helen Rockwell Morley Memorial Music Building, opened in 1927 – its classic Greek design, Corinthian pillars, seating for more than 1,000, and four-manual E.M. Skinner organ with 4,359 pipes. The building was designed by Abram Garfield.
The Civil Aeronautics Authority approved Lake Erie for a civilian pilot program in 1939, several years after Amelia Earhart visited the campus to speak to its Aviators Club. In the 1940s, President Helen D. Bragdon, a Harvard alumna, moved the college from more Victorian ideals toward an active, responsible citizenry.
A special exhibit of Modern art signaled the opening of Royce Hall for the Fine and Performing Arts in 1970. Prints, sculpture, graphics and more by celebrated artists such as Dali, dekooning, Magritte, Miro and Picasso were on display. R. Buckminster Fuller spoke at the facility's ground-breaking.
In 1985, Lake Erie College became coeducational, merging Garfield Senior College with Lake Erie College for Women, and men were admitted officially as students.
From Wikipedia’s article on Lake Erie College, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5