GPS City GuideGettysburgSchmucker Hall

Stop 17 of 20 · Gettysburg audio walking tour

Schmucker Hall

Seminary Ridge · 1863 · Civil War field hospital

What you'll hear here: about 90 seconds on Schmucker Hall — the story behind what you're looking at, playing hands-free as you arrive.

Schmucker Hall faces you, an American Civil War site listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Adams County, Pennsylvania. This was the original Gettysburg Theological Seminary building, and it served as the seminary’s main building from 1832 to 1895, then as a dedicated dormitory for students until 1951. During the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg it was used as both a Union and Confederate hospital.

In 1960 the Adams County Historical Society leased the building and moved into the nearby Wolf House on the seminary campus preceding the renovation. Beginning in 2006 the Historical Society and the Seminary Ridge Historic Preservation Foundation rehabilitated Schmucker Hall for adaptive reuse as the Seminary Ridge Museum. In 2013, on the 150th anniversary of the battle, the Seminary, the Adams County Historical Society and the Seminary Ridge Historic Preservation Foundation opened the building as the Seminary Ridge Museum.

The Museum houses displays about many different aspects of the battle, the seminary, the town, and the Civil War, and the struggle among faith groups over slavery, and it offers tours of the cupola. The cupola crowns a museum today, just steps from the seminary's Wolf House across your own campus walk.

Where it is

Coordinates
39.83194, -77.24472
Area
Seminary Ridge
Era
1863 · Civil War field hospital
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Three stops free. No account needed. The audio plays itself as you walk.