From the Executive Director

History is all around us. When you drive through one of the more than 2,500 cities, boroughs and townships across the commonwealth, history informs the character of each place. The local traditions, the appearance of the buildings, and the planned open space all reflect the people, their responses to the environment, and their choices — both conscious and unconscious. Pennsylvania bank barns, metal truss bridges, and the Pennsylvania German double door house reflect our state’s agricultural heritage, industry and settlement patterns. The very road you are driving may have been an Indian path in the past.

Our State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) helps Pennsylvanians identify and preserve the Pennsylvania places they care about. Those efforts include surveying historic properties, identifying significant buildings and sites for the National Register of Historic Places, advising government agencies on preservation matters, educating the public about the importance of historic preservation, and providing and facilitating economic incentives for preservation.

Historic preservation has its roots in the 19th century. One of the earliest preservation efforts was to save Independence Hall from demolition in 1816. With the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, formal preservation practices were established for each state. Although identification of historic properties can be proactive, it is often reactive, responding to publicly funded or federally permitted projects that would endanger historic resources. These might include the widening of a state road, the construction of a federal building, or the erection of a new cell tower.

One of the responsibilities of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission is to actively discover the history of the commonwealth. Until the 1980s, the emphasis for proactive efforts was on established landmarks and well-known and well-documented historic places. Early National Register nominations focused on resources like Valley Forge, Fallingwater, and the Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail. Some of those nominations are frustratingly brief, with their significance taken as a given and the analysis limited.

SHPO is constantly looking to learn more — digging deeper, thinking expansively, and being more proactive — in its attempts to understand more about our built environment. In response, historians have begun revising National Register nominations to provide more in-depth history, context and analysis to increase our understanding of these resources. Currently, Pennsylvania’s SHPO is undertaking the revision of the nomination for one of PHMC’s historic sites, Ephrata Cloister.

But the character of Pennsylvania’s places is made up of many buildings and structures that are not listed in the National Register. In an effort to better understand the built environment of Pennsylvania’s diverse regions, SHPO has also undertaken proactive survey efforts to uncover the commonwealth’s lesser-known history. This project, Baseline Survey, was conducted across all 67 counties between 2020 and 2024. Its goals were to discover more about the character and built environment of regions where few buildings were documented, to learn more about underrepresented communities, and to document the types of resources not well-represented in the current inventory of historic sites.

Through research, community input and fieldwork, this project added 20,350 places across 55 counties to our existing list of local historic resources. The types of properties added ranged from Underground Railroad sites in Lycoming County to Chinese laundries in southwestern Pennsylvania, and from buildings constructed for ethnic clubs and fraternal orders to African American churches and cemeteries. The findings from this project can help Pennsylvanians understand more about their environment and inform their decision-making and planning for projects.

In the next phase of Baseline Survey, SHPO will turn its focus to learning more about some of the historic resources uncovered in the first phase. We look forward to sharing new stories about Pennsylvania history with you as we learn more.

Andrea Lowery
Executive Director, PHMC