E. C. Woodruff House

Alfred Kocher was an important American architect, first designing in Colonial Revival and other historical styles, and then embracing modernism. He was a faculty member of Penn State's Department of Architecture from 1918 to 1926, and served as editor of Architectural Record from 1928 to 1938. In State College, he designed three residences, including his own, and one school, the last in collaboration with another local architect. His house at 357 E. Prospect Street is a loose amalgam of revivalist elements constructed of local stone and characterized by a steeply pitched gable, with a pent roof over the entrance. He incorporated fixtures taken from three historic, demolished Pennsylvania buildings. At the E. C. Woodruff house on W. Fairmount Avenue, rough-cut limestone provides a pleasing texture, and the gabled dormers with round-arched windows echo local historic buildings. The entrance has a pediment supported by Doric columns and a wooden semicircular fan above the door. The large, semicircular-arched window in a one-story extension to the west is a reminder that Kocher believed above all in invoking what he called “the principle of irregularity for the Colonial facade.”