"All the things of this world are to be used as you need
them. They are not to be loved. Let them be like an Inn where you stop for a
night; not a piece of land where you settle down. Refresh yourself and move
on! You are on a journey."
St. Augustine
Sermon 167,2
During the decade and a half following the Civil War Villanova College
underwent a program of expansion. In 1869 the college built its first gymnasium and
two years later constructed its first waterworks. It was also in 1871 that Villanova
published its first catalogue. In 1872 steam heat and gas lights appeared on campus
and a college post office opened in a new Pennsylvania Railroad station. Then in
1874 Villanova completed the long anticipated center and west wings of the college
Building (now Alumni Hall) and installed an assembly room (or Dramatic Hall) on the ground
floor of the older east wing. The last construction project of this period came in
1879 when a fourth story was added to the former Belle-Air mansion, now the Augustinian
Monastery.
