The Whitmore Family of East Hamilton Avenue

By James Nowicki

The Whitmore family resided at 500 East Hamilton Avenue in the Highlands from 1929 to 2025, until the death of the last remaining resident in the family, Marion Whitmore. The legacy of such an impressive family, however, will live on past the home. To discuss the home and family, we should first look at the life of the patriarch, Dr. Frank Clifford Whitmore, also called “Rocky.” 

Frank Whitmore was born on October 1, 1887, in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, near the border with Rhode Island, to Frank Hale Whitmore, a salesman and storekeeper, and Lena Avilla Thomas Whitmore, a schoolteacher who read him classical works. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where he was reared. For his high school years, his family moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey. Whitmore recalled playing pool in many city pool halls and Atlantic City High School as a rough place with scant focus on the arts. 

To the surprise of his parents, he suddenly decided to go to college, choosing Harvard University. He worked hard both in academia and in various jobs, such as on the night shift as a switchboard operator at a telephone exchange in Wellesley, seventeen miles from Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also served as an altitude observer at a 1910 aviation meet in Boston, one of the first in the world, and tutored the sons of the wealthy. Despite his heavy work schedule, Whitmore thrived academically. In his junior year he found his true passion in the study of chemistry. He studied under Charles Loring Jackson and Elmer Peter Kohler, pioneers in the field of organic chemistry. In 1911, he graduated, earned his MA in 1912 and his PhD in organic chemistry in 1914, all from Harvard. In June of 1924, he married Marion Gertrude Mason of Cambridge, a Radcliffe graduate in chemistry. 

Frank C. Whitmore, Sr.

In 1914 Whitmore began his teaching career with a year at Williams College in western Massachusetts. From there he moved to the newly-founded Rice Institute, now known as Rice University, in Houston, Texas, teaching there for a year. After Rice, Whitmore was an assistant professor of organic chemistry for two years at the University of Minnesota, and finally in 1920 was hired as a full professor at Northwestern University, outside of Chicago. At Northwestern, he continued to climb the administrative ranks, finally serving as the head of the Chemistry Department.

In 1929 Whitmore moved to State College to begin his role as dean of the School of Chemistry and Physics at Penn State, now the Eberly College of Science. He served as dean for 18 years until his death in 1947. In 1934, Whitmore and his family built and lived in a Châteauesque-style home at 500 East Hamilton Avenue in the Highlands neighborhood, custom designed by the Sears, Roebuck Co. rather than from an out-of-the- catalogue plan. In addition to their catalogue, Sears had a Custom Home Department that worked with clients to modify existing plans or create new one. The Whitmore plans for their new home came from cardboard models that Whitmore himself designed. This nine bedroom and five bathroom house is a large home, with 5,370 square feet of interior livable space, and with an impressive stucco facade, reminiscent of a French chateau. The home’s interior had a variety of features during Whitmore’s lifetime, including secret passages, a “small saluting cannon that fired shotgun shells,” Whitmore’s personal study with a dictaphone, a large living room at one end of the home, a library, and a pool table in the basement. The home stayed in the Whitmore family until 2026, when it was sold. The house was built by John Henszey, who was responsible for constructing many of the homes in the Highlands, including many from the Sears Catalogue.

During Whitmore’s tenure as dean at Penn State, the graduate enrollment in chemistry increased from 18 to over 100 students. In addition, the college awarded 871 bachelors and 383 masters degrees, and 215 doctoral degrees in chemistry and chemical engineering. He was considered affectionate and kept close correspondence with current and graduated students, keeping a list of their names in his office, and contacting them if any prospective job opportunities arose. 

At both Northwestern and Penn State, Whitmore significantly contributed to the field of organic chemistry with his contributions to carbocation rearrangements. His research provided evidence for the existence of a process where carbocations would rearrange, hydrides shifting electrons, forming more stable carbocations. This process, commonly called hydride shifts, is also known as Whitmore shifts, in honor of him. His contributions to chemistry continued while at Penn State, aiding in both researching on hydrocarbons, helping Pennsylvania’s domestic petroleum industry. He, in fact, wrote the book on organic chemistry, the textbook Organic Chemistry. Published in 1937 and posthumously updated in 1948, it has been used for teaching as far away as Denmark. Whitmore, in addition, had served in every executive role of the American Chemical Society, except secretary and treasurer, and had served as president in 1938, visiting 72 of the 104 local sections of the society. 

Whitmore had been awarded twice by the American Chemical Society for his contributions to chemistry—first in 1937, when he received the William H. Nichols Medal for his advances in Organic Chemistry. The second occasion was in the aftermath of the World War II when he received a Willard Gibbs Medal for his efforts both in war munitions and life-saving medication. Whitmore, during the war, had been tasked with finding a means of cheaper reproduction of RDX, which is used in the manufacturing of torpedoes. Whitmore and his team had worked on this, and reportedly, for his conscience’s sake, he also aided the Committee on Medical Research in antimalarials and the Office of Production Research and Development in the mass production of penicillin. Whitmore believed that his work in the war likely saved more than were killed. Whitmore praised the nearly 200 staff members and researchers in the Chemistry and Bacteriology laboratories, insisting that the medal truly belonged to them. In addition, Whitmore became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1946.

As the war came to an end, Whitmore’s tireless efforts shifted instead to a second volume of Organic Chemistry. However, this work would prove to be his last and a posthumous publication, as he suddenly passed away on June 24, 1947 in State College. Marion had closely aided him in updating and publishing his book in 1951. 

Reportedly, his work slowed as he was warned of hypertension, but the death was a sudden shock to the University and chemical world at large. 

While many may focus on Frank Whitmore, much is to be said about his immediate family, especially his wife Marion, whose studies in chemistry aided Whitmore in his own work, both in the laboratories and in publishing. 

Marion Gertrude Whitmore was born on August 5, 1888 to Harry C. Mason and Katherine “Carrie” A. Mason. Her high school education was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She attended Radcliffe College in Cambridge, where she met Whitmore. They married in 1914, and she aided him in his research and publishing his papers and books. The Whitmore family moved around as Frank’s career had picked up. Frank Whitmore, Jr. was born on November 17th, 1915, while the family lived in Cambridge; Mason Thomas Whitmore was born in Houston on September 11, 1917, during Whitmore’s tenure at Rice. When the Whitmores lived in Evanston, Illinois while at Northwestern, Harry Edison and Marion Mason Whitmore were born on May 22, 1920 and July 29, 1926, respectively. 

By the time the family moved to State College in 1929, Frank Jr. was of college age, attending Amherst College, and studying vertebrate paleontology. While at Amherst, he met his future wife, Martha “Marty” Kremers, marrying in 1940. The following year, he attained a Master’s degree in paleontology and stratigraphy, a branch of geology, from Penn State in 1939, and in 1943, he earned a PhD from Harvard University studying vertebrate paleontology. As a recent graduate, he aided the American military during the World War II, much like his father’s efforts. Similarly to his father, he assisted in research, but in the much different field of geological intelligence. As a member of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and a member of General Douglas MacArthur’s general staff, he contributed geological intelligence of land in bays and shores, thus allowing to determine safe spots for landings in the Pacific Campaign.

Frank C. Whitmore, Jr.

For these efforts during World War II, Whitmore was awarded the Medal of Freedom, in 1946—the predecessor to the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In the postwar era, Whitmore’s contributions to the military continued. His stratigraphic findings helped plan the Inchon landings in the Korean War, which allowed the UN-Aligned forces to retake the South. For this, he was appointed the head of the Military Geology Unit of the USGS. After this, Whitmore continued to serve the national government through the USGS with his paleontologic contributions, especially to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and at the state level, the Virginia Museum of Natural History. His efforts in paleontology—excavating pleistocene bones in northern Kentucky directly aided in the creation of the Big Bone Lick State Park, and his assistance in examining a giant squalodont skeleton, led to the naming of a species in his honor, Squalodon whitmorei. Frank Whitmore Jr. also contributed to the academic world, like his father, as a lecturer at The College of William and Mary, and served on several national societies in his field, the National Geographic Society committee and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, of which he was the last surviving charter member. Frank Jr., lived the farthest from State College in the Washington, DC metropolitan area after college and remained there until dying in his daughter’s home in Maryland on March 18, 2012. By the time of his death, he was a great-grandfather of six. 

Of the other Whitmore family members, all stayed much closer to their home on East Hamilton Avenue and were buried next to Frank and Marion Whitmore in State College Memorial Park. Mason Whitmore attended State College High School, graduating in 1936, went to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire for a year, and graduated from Yale in 1941 with a degree in English Literature. After this, Mason sought further work in the arts, attending Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for theatre and drama. Although he would keep a membership of the Metropolitan Opera Guild of New York City, he shifted to the medical world, attending Cornell for radiology, a nascent field in medicine at the time of his graduation. He first worked at the Thomas Jefferson and Lankenau Hospitals in Philadelphia. In 1972, he moved back to State College, becoming a radiologist for Sylvan Radiology at Altoona Hospital, retiring when he was 80 years old. He reportedly belonged to “many professional organizations related to the medical field” and the aforementioned Metropolitan Opera Guild of New York. He died in State College on July 17, 2014, having never married. 

Harry Edison’s story appears to be the least documented. He died on June 6, 2001, and his wife, Mary Lenore Krumine passed away in 1985, Both are buried in the same cemetery as the rest of the Whitmore family. 

Marion “Hootie” Mason Whitmore Jr., was the youngest, and last of the Whitmores to live at 500 East Hamilton Avenue. Born in Evanston like Harry Edison, she was a toddler when the family moved to State College, attended the Grier School in Tyrone, studied ballet in Philadelphia, and attended Penn State, attaining a Bachelor’s degree in pre-medicine in 1950, then a Master’s in agricultural and biological chemistry in 1955. She worked in the laboratories at Penn State, and as an avid equestrian, also in the barns, attending to the horses. She, like Mason, also belonged to the Metropolitan Opera Guild. A fan of the arts on the stage and on the canvas, she belonged to the Art Alliance of Central Pennsylvania and enjoyed oil painting and also was notable for her devotion to flying, even attaining a pilot’s license. She lived in the Whitmore home until her recent passing, on March 2, 2025, after which the home was subsequently sold to a private owner, thus ending Whitmore ownership. 

Despite the Whitmore family who lived in State College passing away, their legacy and contributions still remain to this day. Frank C. Whitmore’s legacy is still seen in his contributions to the field of organic chemistry, as well as the physical fabric of State College. Today, Whitmore’s name adorns the laboratory which serves as the main facility for the undergraduate Chemistry Department in the Eberly College of Science. The Whitmore Labs hold space for general chemistry, organic chemistry, and analytical and physical chemistry. Frank Whitmore, Jr. ‘s contributions to the Smithsonian are still located in the National Museum of Natural History to this day, and his work in World War II and the Korean War have an untold impact. 

Whitmore home

James Nowicki, a history major and Spanish minor at Penn State, graduated in the Spring Semester 2026. He intends to pursue a career in history. James has been interested in State College history ever since he first visited the area in his youth, and has been involved with it, writing articles and working with both the Penn State history department and the Centre County Historical Society. He has also written about the Holmes-Foster/ Highlands Historic District.