“The Public Is Entitled to Know”: Fighting for the Public Memory of Henry Clay Frick

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on “The Public Is Entitled to Know”: Fighting for the Public Memory of Henry Clay Frick On Saturday, July 23, 1892, Russian immi­grant and New York anarchist Alexander Berkman burst into the office of Henry Clay Frick in down­town Pittsburgh, stabbed him three times, and shot him in the ear and neck. Frick fought back and, with his secretary’s assistance, eventually subdued his assailant. Although he had sustained several serious wounds to his legs and chest, Frick insisted...
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Letters to the Editor

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letters to the Editor Homestead Revisited Thank you for the contribution by Brent D. Glass in the winter 1992 issue, “‘The Public is Enti­tled to Know’: Fighting for the Public Memory of Henry Clay Frick.” Many Pittsburgh resi­dents with three generations of local family knew that his reputation was built on the backs of coal miners and steel workers whose wretched lives he ignored. An...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Illustrating an Anthracite Era: The Photographic Legacy of John Horgan Jr. by Gwendoline E. Percival and Chester J. Kulesa Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and Anthracite Heritage Museum and Iron Furnaces Associates, 1995 (73 pages, paper, $9.95) Exemplifying the breadth and depth of more than twenty thousand images made by a single photographer of the anthracite region, the...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Let’s Motor! Although Detroit has earned the title of “Motor City,” Pittsburgh was home to twenty automobile makers at the turn of the century, manufacturing such notable vehicles as the Penn 30 Touring Car, the Standard Model E Touring Car, the Keystone Six-Sixty, the Brush Model D Runabout, and the Artzberger Steam Surrey. Several of these automobiles attracted widespread...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Xanthus Smith It is Sunday, March 9, 1862. Smoke hangs thick in the air. The water is littered with debris. The air even tastes bitter. Cannon roar. Cries of men pierce the din. Ironclad titans, the vessels Monitor and the Merrimac, clash in one of the fiercest confrontations of the Civil War. This is the Battle of Hampton Roads. Today, museum-goers are able to revis­it the Battle of Hampton...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf The King of the Movies: Film Pioneer Siegmund Lubin by Joseph P. Eckhardt Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998. (286 pages, cloth, $55.00) That immigrant Jews exerted a profound impact on the growth of American cinema is well known and has been the subject of considerable scholarship. However, the country’s first Jewish movie mogul, Siegmund “Pop” Lubin (1851-1923) of...
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Executive Director’s Message

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Executive Director’s Message If you want to see examples of Pennsylvania’s collections in the future, you may be forced to travel to New York, Richmond – maybe even Las Vegas. At least three proposals to move valuable art, archives, and artifacts are prompting strong public reaction and litigation. None of these cases have been resolved at the time of this writing and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Vietnam Zippos: American Soldiers’ Engravings and Stories, 1965–1973 by Sherry Buchanan published by the University of Chicago Press, 2007; 180 pages, cloth, $25.00 For generations of Americans, it was an icon with the decidedly distinctive click. Invented by George G. Blaisdell, the first Zippo® lighter was manufactured by the Zippo Manufacturing Company, Bradford, Bradford County, seventy-five...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Pivotal Pennsylvania: Presidential Politics from FDR to the Twenty-First Century by G. Terry Madonna published by the Pennsylvania Historical Association, 2008; 126 pages, paper, $14.95 Pivotal Pennsylvania: Presidential Politics from FDR to the Twenty-First Century by G. Terry Madonna, one of Pennsylvania’s foremost political analysts, opens with an explanation of how the Democratic Party...
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