The Legacy of George Way

Posted by on Mar 14, 2022 in | Comments Off on The Legacy of George Way On February 2 this year, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter. We’ll know soon whether or not he was correct. But regardless of the weather, this is the time of year that we mark the anniversary of Pennsylvania’s founding. In March 1681 King Charles II of England granted land on the east coast of North America to William Penn as repayment for funds...
read more

Into the Dark World of Catching Crooks, Culprits and Convicts: An Interview with Robert K. Wittman

Posted by on Mar 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on Into the Dark World of Catching Crooks, Culprits and Convicts: An Interview with Robert K. Wittman by Michael J. O’Malley III Robert King “Bob” Wittman in no way resembles the highly romanticized portrayals of FBI agents made famous over the decades by movie studios and television series. He is not the heavy-hitting, gang-busting, chain-smoking G-man, replete with fedora rakishly angled atop his head. Instead, he embodies the old-school preppy style – looking as though...
read more

Back in Plain Sight: Restoring the Midcentury Modern Furnishings at The State Museum and Archives Complex

Posted by on Apr 12, 2016 in | Comments Off on Back in Plain Sight: Restoring the Midcentury Modern Furnishings at The State Museum and Archives Complex October 14, 1964 With the construction of the new William Penn Memorial Museum and Archives Building (now The State Museum and Archives Complex) in Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PHMC Executive Director S.K. Stevens penned an urgent memo to the commonwealth’s secretary of property and supplies requesting nearly $25,000 worth of “chairs, sofas, and upholstered benches,” as well as numerous...
read more

The Great Escape: Camping in the 19th Century

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Great Escape: Camping in the 19th Century During the turbulent nineteenth century, Americans were as mobile as wheels, waterways and ambition could make them. The population was preoccupied with carving out a new nation, emigrating, pioneering, surveying, sod busting, prospecting for gold and, fundamentally, attempt­ing to preserve body and soul. With the surge westward and the consuming desire to push on to the frontiers, there was a...
read more

The Furniture of Soap Hollow: Makers’ Marks and a Master’s Touch

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Furniture of Soap Hollow: Makers’ Marks and a Master’s Touch It’s been misidentified. Misunderstood. Misnamed. Mistreated. And mistakenly misla­beled by leading antiques dealers, knowledgeable collec­tors, magazine writers and curators of prestigious museums and institutions. Tt’s the little known, rarely encountered, but extremely important decorated furniture of Soap Hollow in southwest­ern Pennsylvania. To cognizant connoisseurs of antique...
read more

George H. Danner: The Retailer and His Relic Rooms

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on George H. Danner: The Retailer and His Relic Rooms In the early 1930s Milton S. Hershey established an Indian Museum in the town which he had built around his chocolate factory. Like the town’s amusement park, ornate theater and fa­mous Starlight Ballroom, the museum was provided as a source of enjoyment and recre­ation for Hershey’s workers and their families. In 1935, in a move which broadened the focus of the original Indian...
read more

The New Taste in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The New Taste in Pennsylvania Like the nation itself during the so-called “Federal” period, the arts in Pennsylvania reached a crescendo in their development that had an unexpected unity, a strong purpose, and a national style. Despite great varia­tions in the Germanic and English traditions, Pennsylvania emerged from the revolutionary period reasonably cohesive. City and country perspectives, naive and...
read more

One Should Not Overlook Union County

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on One Should Not Overlook Union County Union County on the West Branch of the Susquehanna River is one of Pennsylvania’s smaller counties, encompassing a bare 258 square miles, with a population of 30,000, including 3000 college stu­dents and 1900 inmates of two federal prisons. Few of its residents have held high political office and fewer of its names have appeared in Who’s Who in America. Yet the historical...
read more

Central Pennsylvania’s Very Own Painted Ladies

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Central Pennsylvania’s Very Own Painted Ladies The painted plank bottom chair, a sturdy survivor of Pennsyl­vania’s golden age of chairmaking, is at long last garnering the recognition it has long deserved – thanks to the nation’s seemingly insatiable appetite for what many call The Country Look. This hand-decorated chair, admired by many for its graceful stenciling and skilled workmanship, has weathered a century of heavy...
read more

Commemorating a Centennial by Revising a Vision

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Commemorating a Centennial by Revising a Vision The American museum was and is an idea. The European museum was a fact. Almost without exception the European museum was first a collection. With few exceptions most American museums were first an ideal,” Philadelphian Nathaniel Burt wrote in his 1977 history of the American museum, Palaces for People. Unlike their European counterparts, which were usually created to house the great...
read more