She chose her first instrument, a lithe film camera called the Kodak 110, from a catalog of gift items from her father’s work. Kruger began taking photos when she was young. She’s also a hobby photographer and a self–described “goth” kid who manages two social media accounts, one for her favorite squirrel snaps and another for detailed photos of the gargoyles. Kruger currently works as senior research resources manager in Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine, but she’s bounced around the medical and veterinary schools and University secretary’s office for 20 years. Kathy Kruger (SP2 ‘03), the mastermind behind the account, takes me on a walk around the Quad’s perimeter to discuss her craft-professionally photographing the demonic visages that dot Penn’s campus. The distorted figures find a new life on the feed of 450 followers (and a handful of explicit commenters-“Send pic ❤ 2M+”). Kocent hopes most Penn students were literate by the early 1900s, when the Quad figurines were installed, so he presumes their purpose was mostly decorative-both memorializing and satirizing campus life.Īfter 120 years, the stony–faced campus residents’ stories are being adapted to the digital age in the form of the Penn Gargoyles Instagram page. “ were a way of sharing stories, myths, and cultural lessons that wanted to be handed down from one generation to another.”

“Between the 12th and 16th centuries, the public was largely illiterate,” Kocent explains. They wicked water away from the building and served the original purpose of decorative iconography: telling stories. The earliest figures on campus were most likely affixed to the drains of the Fisher Fine Arts Library in the late 1800s. Kocent describes gargoyles as “a fancy, decorated downspout,” while bosses are purely “decorative elements” carved out of stone and set into a building's facade.

Of the hundreds of characters, very few are actually gargoyles, a common misconception. The donkey boss is part of a vast collection of miniature sculptures that adorn the buildings around Penn’s campus (the exact number of figures is contested- Penn Today reported at least 163, but the Philomathean Society counted 450).

Download old movie gargoyles