Independence Hall, The Birthplace of a Nation

September 1824 was a busy month for Phila­delphians. The Mar­quis de Lafayette returned to America for the first time since the Revolution­ary War, and it was rumored that the high point of his tra­vels would be a visit to Penn­sylvania’s venerable State House. Naturally, much of the preparation for his visit cen­tered on the old red brick building where the events of the Revolution had...
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A Capital Idea! A Brief and Bumpy History of Pennsylvania’s Capitols

A mere one hundred or so miles separate Philadelphia’s Chestnut and Harrisburg’s Third streets. But the path­ – metaphorically, at least­ – between the Keystone State’s first and final capitol build­ings seems far longer and rockier than geography suggests. From the Commonwealth’s earliest days, when the government met in Philadelphia’s elegant State...
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Shorts

On Friday and Saturday, July 26-27 [2002], the Slate Belt Heritage Center, in Bangor, will host “Slate Belt Heritage Days,” replete with walking tours, local history talks, horse-drawn carriage rides, story­tellers, crafts demonstrations, and a guid­ed tour of an operating slate quarry. The history of the slate industry in Northampton County is traced to the mid-nineteenth century,...
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Lloyd Mifflin: Artist of the Susquehanna

While many artists have painted the majestic Susquehanna River, none were as devoted to studying, rhapsodizing about its beauty and, ultimately, painting it in its many moods as was Pennsylvania native Lloyd Mifflin (1846–1921). In many ways, Mifflin typified the romantic, if often improbable, late nineteenth-century image of the artist as an attractive, highly sensitive, elitist dandy who...
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