One reason John Fry is staying at Drexel is the acquisition of the city’s history museum: ‘I want to see that through’

John A. Fry recently got a contract extension to remain as Drexel University’s president through 2028, and one of the reasons he’s staying is to continue to shepherd the school’s recent acquisition of the Atwater Kent Museum — the city’s history collection.

“I feel very strongly that I want to see that through this transition and to make sure we can make that collection accessible,” said Fry, who, with his five-year contract extension will become one of the longest-serving college presidents in Philadelphia.

Fry, who has led Drexel since 2010, said the college already has $800,000 in a series of gifts and grants to help with the maintenance and digitization of the 130,000-piece collection, which includes such historical items as George Washington’s desk that he used at the President’s House at Sixth and High Street, and from more recent times, Jimmy Rollins’ Phillies jersey.

» READ MORE: John A. Fry’s contract extended to lead Drexel another five years

That funding preceded the approval this month of the ownership transition from the city to the university by Philadelphia Orphan’s Court, he said.

The university, Fry said, is in discussion with about a dozen funders, both individuals and organizations, about getting more money for the collection.

Fry said he was glad Drexel could help when Mayor Kenney and former city managing director Michael DiBerardinis called him in 2018 and asked if the university would take over the collection. An arrangement with another institution, which he declined to name, had fallen through and the city was in a bind, he said.

“We thought it would be a terrible thing if this collection was not accessible anymore,” he said.

» READ MORE: Drexel acquires city's history

A university team is preparing to pack up and move the collection to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where it will be stored in an 11,000-square-foot space, he said.

Drexel, he said, wants to make as much of the collection accessible as possible, both on the campus and by lending it to other institutions. Very little of it was on display at Atwater Kent, he said.

“This is stuff no one has seen really for generations,” he said.

The university plans to digitize the collection and set up a website that will allow people to see everything. He envisions scholars coming to campus, too, to work with the collection.

Fry also foresees the collection playing a big role as the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches in 2026.

The university likely will undertake a fund-raising campaign to establish a permanent endowment for the long-term care and stewardship of the collection, he said. But first Drexel will wrap up its current campaign that is set to conclude this summer and has so far brought in $775 million, and then conduct a feasibility study on the next university campaign, he said.

“In that feasibility study, we will look at a sub-study that focuses on the endowment for the Atwater Kent collection,” he said.

It’s not the first historical collection the university has acquired, he said. The school also has a history of women in medicine collection at the Academy of Natural Sciences, which Drexel acquired early in Fry’s presidency.

Fry said he also wants to continue working on finding other partners to help run St. Christopher’s Hospital, which hosts rotations for third- and fourth-year students from Drexel’s medical school. Drexel and Tower Health bought St. Christopher’s out of bankruptcy in 2019 and have been overseeing the hospital as partners, but Tower has indicated it wants to step back.

“We recently committed to the four-year extension of the line of credit [for St. Christopher’s] through March 31 of 2026,” he said. “So, we’re not going anywhere relative to our support.”

Fry said his decision to stay at Drexel longer will also provide Drexel with continuity at a time when a lot of other local colleges are facing leadership changes, and continue momentum the university has built coming out of the pandemic. He said freshman enrollment for next year, currently projected at 3,256, is running more than 100 students ahead of last year at this time.

“To be able to serve Drexel for the next six years is really exciting,” he said.

Staff writer Stephan Salisbury contributed to this article.