Preserving Pieces of Pennsylvania’s Past: An Inside Look at the Building of the Commonwealth’s Collections

Associations between butterflies and buttons, Conestoga wagons and cannon, sculpture and arrowheads, or fossils and founder William Penn’s original Charter may seem tenuous, even obscure and, perhaps, nonsensical. But a relationship does exist: they are among the one and a half million objects and thirty thousand cubic feet of manuscripts, records, maps and photographs in the custody and...
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A Salute to the Bicentennial of the Keystone State

The current Bicentennial celebration commemorates not the birth of the United States, but the proclama­tion of thirteen British-American colonies that were “free and independent states” as of July 4, 17.76. When they formed a loose compact in 1761, their articles of confederation declared that “each state retains its sover­eignty, freedom and independence.” The...
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“The Greatest Highway to the West”: Photographer William H. Rau Documents the Pennsylvania Railroad

It is perfectly safe in saying the amateur, and even the professional, will have much to learn from the results of this photo­graphic expedition, fitted out some months ago by the Pennsylvania Railroad with as much care and almost the expense of an Arctic one, and which is still in the field of exploration, daily sending in remarkable illustrations of choice picture finds and showing that which...
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