The Sesquicentennial International Exposition

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on The Sesquicentennial International Exposition The seeds for the 1926 Sesquicentennial International Exposition were sown by the success of Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition. Philadelphia department store magnate John Wanamaker, the lone survivor of the 1876 Centennial’s Finance Committee, provided the initial push for another exposition to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately, he passed away in...
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Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation Newsletter – Summer 2026

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation Newsletter – Summer 2026 Topics in the Summer 2026 Newsletter: PHF, PHMC Join Carpenters’ Hall in Commemorating PA Provincial Conference PHF at Philadelphia Flower Show Second Annual Virtual 5K PHF Announces New Board Members Summer-2026-PHF-Newsletter...
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The Skills That Built a New Nation Are Building the Next Generation: The InHarmony Initiative at Old Economy Village

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on The Skills That Built a New Nation Are Building the Next Generation: The InHarmony Initiative at Old Economy Village   A student runs a hand along the smooth edge of a wooden board, carefully checking for splinters before lifting it onto a workbench in the woodshop at Old Economy Village, a preserved 19th-century Harmonist settlement and National Historic Landmark in Ambridge. For many students, it is the first time they have created something tangible, something that began not on a screen but in their...
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Americana Insights 2025, edited by Lisa Minardi

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on Americana Insights 2025, edited by Lisa Minardi Americana Insights 2025 edited by Lisa Minardi Americana Insights, distributed by University of Pennsylvania Press, 321 pp., hardcover $64.95 It’s not often that a monumental tome comes along to update and correct the hundred-year-old record of a folk art form. Devoted exclusively to Pennsylvania German redware pottery, volume three of the Americana Insights series examines the work of the most...
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Pittsburgh in 50 Maps by Stentor Danielson

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on Pittsburgh in 50 Maps by Stentor Danielson Pittsburgh in 50 Maps by Stentor Danielson Belt Publishing, 136 pp., hardcover $30 If a picture says a thousand words, what might we say about a map, or more to the point, 50 maps, professing to explore and reveal the patterns and contours of a single city? Based on the specimens gathered together in this highly informative, often surprising, and relentlessly original volume by Stentor...
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Andy Warhol’s Mother by Elaine Rusinko

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on Andy Warhol’s Mother by Elaine Rusinko Andy Warhol’s Mother The Woman Behind the Artist by Elaine Rusinko University of Pittsburgh Press, 528 pp., hardcover $40; paperback $24 Born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh in 1928, the man better known as Andy Warhol went on to become one of the most enduringly prominent American artists of his generation. Warhol’s legacy has been turned to repeatedly in recent biographies, docuseries and...
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William Bartram’s Visual Wonders by Elizabeth A. Athens

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on William Bartram’s Visual Wonders by Elizabeth A. Athens William Bartram’s Visual Wonders The Drawings of an American Naturalist by Elizabeth A. Athens University of Pittsburgh Press, 264 pp., paperback $26 The Bartrams’ fascinating place in American natural history is the starting point for Athens’ sumptuous volume. Readers will gain a wide knowledge of the family of painters and how they influenced humans’ increasing understanding of the natural...
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Searching for Keystone Hall’s Shield Stone

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on Searching for Keystone Hall’s Shield Stone This is a story about the search for an architectural fragment of the second governor’s residence in Harrisburg, purchased in 1864 and first occupied by Gov. Andrew Gregg Curtin. Prior to this, most governors had lived in rented houses throughout the city, many of them less than ideal. In 1858 the legislature declined to build a governor’s house but purchased one on South Second Street below...
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Understanding Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on Understanding Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 In March 1802, an enslaved man named Frank slipped away from his enslaver in Lancaster County. Prior to his escape, Frank had served as both a chauffeur and a laborer, moving between roads and fields that he would now use as a route to freedom. He fled on a Sunday night wearing a beaver hat and a pair of light-colored pants. Most importantly, he carried a freedom certificate that once belonged...
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Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson: A Woman of the American Enlightenment

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson: A Woman of the American Enlightenment By the late 1760s, Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson’s name was known throughout the city of Philadelphia for her evening literary gatherings attended by the city’s intellectual elite. Dubbed “the most learned woman in America” by Anne Hollingsworth Wharton, first historian of the National Society of the Colonial Dames in America, Fergusson’s poetry and journals captured the experience of a woman whose...
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