Finding Truth in the Frame: Leah Frances’ Discovery of Pennsylvania’s Historic Places

The White Horse Restaurant, Berwick.
From @americansquares: “The White Horse restaurant, opened in 1940 in Berwick, PA, was the go-to restaurant for folks working in the American Car and Foundry factory where they built Stuart tanks used in World War II. This was my third trip to the White Horse and as you may already know, I recommend it highly!”
Leah Frances

The National Park Service describes historic preservation as “a conversation with our past about our future.” Historic places are vital to this conversation, revealing the stories about the events, people and developments of a community’s past and representing its identity. In 1935 Verne E. Chatelain, a pioneer of public history and the first National Park Service historian, wrote the paper “History in Our National Parks” to convey the importance of connecting people to historic places. He asserted, “the task is to breathe the breath of life into American history for those to whom it has been a dull recital of meaningless facts — to recreate for the average citizen something of the color, the pageantry, and the dignity of our national past.”

The meaning of “historic places” is continually evolving as communities learn new lessons from places surviving from the past. Historic places can reveal who we are as Pennsylvanians. They are an expression of our values and suggest how our values are changing.

At the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office, we strive to deepen our understanding of how people connect to these places as new definitions of community emerge. We’ve come to understand that communities are people connected not only by place but also by common interests and goals. Social media and the internet have made virtual communities viable and prevalent.

Some people mine social media sites in search of authentic places to explore. That was my plan when I happened upon @americansquares, the Instagram account of Leah Frances, where she shares her photographs of mostly older American businesses, restaurants and attractions that have maintained a mid-20th-century design or aura. I was fascinated by Leah’s perspective of the Pennsylvania places she posted and how she is able to tell the story behind the pictures. Her artistic photographs draw you into a place, her frame serving as a portal.

Leah’s impressions of American life were shaped in part by her father’s love for Hollywood movies. Born in Canada and raised on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, she became intrigued by stories in films, people’s memories, and the distance between time and memory. She began developing her photography skills in high school using a Yashica camera. The square, 6-by-6 images produced by the camera are suited to Instagram’s box frame dimensions. She fell in love with the format and how the camera required her to compose in real time — no zoom lens, no cropping. “I zoom with my feet,” Leah explained, and she considers on site what will be included in the photo and what will be left out to “create a portal to experience that place. It’s the truth in the frame.”

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Leah’s curiosity about these places eventually led her to discover Easton, in Pennsylvania’s Northampton County, and one day relocate there. She takes many photographs of building exteriors but seeks particularly to capture interiors. “History is embedded in the interior,” she told me. We could all look at the same place and see it in different ways.

Leah looks to find the heart of communities and often leaves touched by the people she meets and the places she visits. Her goal is to learn what she can about the places she visits and to then “show something optimistic” and “the beauty” of place because she would like to make people feel connected to their history and proud of where they live.

#PreservationHappensHere

In May 2019 the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office (PA SHPO) launched a social media campaign for its historic preservation plan #PreservationHappensHere to encourage Pennsylvanians to discover, share and celebrate historic places in their communities.

#PreservationHappensHere is based on the idea that great preservation activities are happening every day across the commonwealth. Goals of the campaign are to highlight the efforts that Pennsylvanians are making to care for historic places, communities and stories; to recognize smaller preservation successes that often fly under the radar; to encourage others to recognize and promote preservation in their own neighborhoods; and to broaden the definition and understanding of historic preservation by seeing what others identify as “preservation happening” through use of the hashtag #PreservationHappensHere.

One of the many ways PA SHPO implements Pennsylvania’s statewide historic preservation plan is with their Community Initiative Award, which recognizes organizations, municipalities, agencies, individuals, and others whose work embodies the #PreservationHappensHere concept. Recipients of the award have included Bradford Revitalization Team, McKean County; East Liberty Development Inc., Allegheny County; Fighter’s Heaven, Schuylkill County; Hidden City Philadelphia; Jefferson County History Center; Lazaretto, Delaware County; Mahoning Drive-In, Carbon County; Redbank Valley Trails Association, Clarion County; Roxian Theater, Allegheny County; and Walk In Art Center, Schuylkill County.

For more information on #PreservationHappensHere, visit phmc.pa.gov/Preservation.

Leah Frances’ American Squares project can be found on Instagram at @americansquares. For more information on Leah Frances’ work, visit leah-frances.com.

Andrea L. MacDonald is the director of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office.