During his provostship (1881-1894) William Pepper propelled the University of Pennsylvania to the front ranks of American universities by founding several departments and erecting additional buildings on its relatively new West Philadelphia campus. It was one of his dreams to bring together under one roof artifacts that evidenced the development and history of humanity from antiquity to the present. In 1887 he persuaded the University trustees to accept artifacts from an upcoming expedition to the ancient site of Nippur (Iraq) and secured their promise to erect a fireproof building to house them. This agreement was the beginning of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

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Taken from the roof of College Hall on 20 May 1891, the photograph to the left looks southeast over the South Street Bridge, railroad tracks, and Schuylkill River toward Philadelphia's Center City. A small dwelling sits at the south corner of 34th and Spruce Sts. (right foreground), a large stone barn is behind, with a bathhouse on South St. (center middleground). The large parcel of depressed land across South St. from the bathhouse is the future site of Franklin Field, where a succession of stadiums would rise face-to-face with the expanding Museum. This swampy wasteland near the Blockley Almshouse was eventually given by the City to the University for public improvement purposes.

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Following Pepper's resignation in 1894, Charles Custis Harrison (1844-1929) assumed the Provostship of the University, and eventually the Chairmanship of the Museum Board. The political and social rivalry that characterized their relationship prior to Pepper's death continued to be expressed in the expansion of the Museum. In the 1899 building, one ascended exterior, then interior stairs to arrive at Pepper Hall containing the founder's bust. In the adjacent terraced park, one ascended short flights of stairs to reach Karl Bitter's monumental bronze statue of Pepper. When the Harrison Rotunda was erected in 1915 (as the westernmost of the three planned), it overshadowed the Pepper memorials, being the tallest building on campus. Updating the carriage entrance (complete with horse trough) of the original building, the Rotunda featured an automobile-accessible entrance. Pepper's park was eventually converted into a parking lot, years after 33rd St. was cut through the Museum grounds in 1959 to facilitate traffic flow to and from the Civic Center.

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Eckley Coxe was one of the Museum's most generous patrons. An avid admirer of Egyptian civilization from childhood, he personally financed six Museum expeditions to Nubia and Egypt between 1907 and 1915. As President of the Museum's Board (1910-1916) he contributed large sums for general operating expenses. Although he had been the major contributor toward the construction of the Harrison Rotunda, he graciously deferred to the University Provost as namesake for the structure. Never robust, Coxe fell ill and died at the age of forty-four, leaving a half-million dollar endowment to the Museum's Egyptian Section. The Coxe Memorial Egyptian Wing was constructed in 1924 to display the collections he cherished. Public enthusiasm created by the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922 provided a warm reception for the Coxe Wing opening.

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Eldridge Johnson, founder of the Victor Talking Machine Co., became Chairman of the Museum Board in the late 1920s. Johnson's Museum benefactions were many. He sponsored archaeological expeditions to Ur (Iraq), Beth Shean (Palestine), and Piedras Negras (Guatemala), resulting in the excavation of some of the Museum's most celebrated artifacts. He also donated stellar objects to the collections, including two limestone reliefs of the favorite horses of the Chinese Emperor T'ai Tsung, and the rock crystal sphere of the Dowager Empress Cixi. The latter item Johnson purchased in memory of Museum Director George Byron Gordon. Gordon died in 1927 as the third wing erected during his administration was rising. Few have remembered Johnson's primary role in funding the Museum's fourth section. He declined to have the building named for himself, opting instead for its designation as the Administrative Wing. As the years went by, Museum staff began calling it the Educational Wing since that department conducted activities there. When the Education Department relocated in 1971, staff began calling its former home the Sharpe Wing, after the Sharpe Memorial Gallery on the top floor corridor, named for Richard and Sally Patterson Sharpe. By extension, the entrance and adjacent courtyard began to be called Sharpe as well.

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The effects of the Great Depression and World War II were devastating for the Museum, especially in terms of administrative activities, but expansion of the collections and research abroad also suffered. Needless to say, the building program was interrupted following the stock market crash; and both postwar income tax and competition with the Philadelphia Museum of Art made it harder to attract wealthy patrons.

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Atkin, Olshin, Lawson-Bell and Associates' plan for the Collections Storage and Study Mainwaring Wing is both a return to the 1896 master plan and a continuation of Mitchell and Giurgola's Modernism. The wing is a state-of-the-art storage facility with environmental control, and office and workspace for those who maintain and study the collections.

Extending from the small north facade of the Academic Wing, it has four floors and a basement, matching the height of the Administrative Wing and enclosing the courtyard on the east end. The wing's most distinguishing feature is its inventive, dual personality. On the eastern facade (not visible in photograph), bronze panels with limestone surrounds face the concrete foundation; and an arcade lightens the massive structure at street level, perpendicular to the Franklin Field arcade. Conversely, the northern and eastern facades are a post-Modern interpretation of the original buildings. Not only the proportions, materials, and coursing are matched, but decorative details are continued, such as ceramic tiles for adornment. An illuminated bay facing South St. acts as a visual equivalent to the apse on the 1899 building directly across the lower courtyard.

The wing was completed in May 2002. After more than a century of construction, through the efforts of four Museum directors and three distinct architectural partnerships, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has a final wing which simultaneously greets the new millennium and commemorates the centennial of the original building.