This is the beautiful Old Main building at Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, PA from a couple of days ago. Washington & Jefferson College traces its origin to three log cabin colleges established by three frontier clergymen in the 1780s. Washington Academy was chartered by the Pennsylvania General Assembly on September 24, 1787 and was originally in Canonsburg, PA and was called the Canonsburg Academy.

In 1802, Canonsburg Academy was reconstituted as Jefferson College. In 1806, Matthew Brown petitioned the Pennsylvania General Assembly to grant Washington Academy a charter, allowing it to be re-christened as Washington College. At various times over the next 60 years, the various parties within the two colleges pursued unification with each other, but the question of where the unified college would be located thwarted those efforts. In 1817, a disagreement over a perceived agreement for unification erupted into "The College War" and threatened the existence of both colleges. Following the Civil War, both colleges were short on students and on funds, causing them to join together as Washington & Jefferson College in 1865.

Old Main (pictured here) was originally built in the early 1830's but was significantly redesigned into its current Second Empire/Italianate style in 1875.