Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Hope Abandoned: Eastern State Penitentiary By Mark Perrott Pennsylvania Prison Society and Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, 1999 (105 pages, cloth, $28.00) The images by Pittsburgh photographer Mark Perrott of Philadelphia’s “modern ruin,” Eastern State Penitentiary, are haunting in their portrayal of a medieval-looking fortress that is falling into grave disrepair....
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My Day at the Bargaining Table

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on My Day at the Bargaining Table Our family consisted of seven children, my mother, who had emigrated from Italy in 1908, and my father, who was born in Carbondale, Lackawanna County. We lived in a small anthracite (or hard coal) mining town, Old Forge, also in Lackawanna County. Dad began working as a breaker boy in the coal industry when he was fifteen years old. After years of such hard labor, Dad began to try to rectify the...
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Spalding Memorial Library – Tioga Point Museum

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Spalding Memorial Library – Tioga Point Museum The Spalding Memorial Library-Tioga Point Mu­seum, in Athens, Bradford County, is an important civic building designed by architect Albert Hamilton Kipp (1850-1906) in the Colonial Revival and Classical Revival styles. Kipp studied with James Renwick, architect of New York’s Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and the Smithsonian Institution’s “Castle” in Washington, D.C....
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Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Wealth, Waste, and Alienation: Growth and Decline in the Connellsville Coke Industry By Kenneth Warren University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001 (297 pages, cloth, $30.00) In less than three-quarters of a century, the Connellsville coke industry, situated in southwestern Pennsylvania, mushroomed from slight beginnings into a key supplier essential to the iron and steel industries. It then fell victim...
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Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Big Steel: The First Century of the United States Steel Corporation By Kenneth Warren University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001 (405 pages, cloth, $32.00) At its formation a century ago, in 1901, the United States Steel Corporation was the world’s largest industrial organization. Within its first year, the company was producing two-thirds of America’s raw steel, and soon supported the...
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Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Traveling the Pennsylvania Railroad: The Photographs of William H. Rau Edited by John C. Van Home, with Eileen E. Drelick Univer­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2002 (272 pages, cloth, $49.95) In 1891 and again in 1893, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company (PRR) – known to generations by its sobriquet, “the Pennsy” – commissioned William Herman Rau (1855-1920), a well known...
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The Value of Pennsylvania History

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Value of Pennsylvania History George W. Bush won the presidential election of 2000 because the fifty states cast more electoral votes for him, even though more people actually voted for his opponent, Albert A. Gore Jr. The election reminded Americans about a curious institution called the Electoral College, and an equally peculiar system known as federalism in which each state conducts elections according to distinct laws...
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Portrait of Valentine Blanchard

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Portrait of Valentine Blanchard Upon graduating from Lancaster’s Franklin and Marshall College in 1900, Worth B. Stottlemyer settled in Arling­ton, Virginia, where he prospered in the insurance and real estate businesses. An insatiable collector, he amassed a cache of antiques and works of art, intending to open an antiques shop in Frederick, Maryland, upon retiring. While building his enormous collection, Stottle­myer...
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Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Carnegie By Peter Krass John Wiley and Company, Inc., 2002 (612 pages, cloth $35.00) The name Carnegie, like several others of its day – Westing­house, Morgan, Ford, Rockefeller, Winchester, Chrysler, Du Pont, Edison, Hershey – stands apart, apparently requiring lit­tle, if any, introduction. Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) stands next to J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller as one of the...
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Abraham Lincoln Mask (1860) by Leonard W. Volk

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Abraham Lincoln Mask (1860) by Leonard W. Volk One of the most famous likenesses of President Abraham Lincoln is an unusu­al life-mask made in March 1860 by sculptor Leonard W. Volk (1828-1895) in his Chicago studio. Volk measured Lin­coln’s head and upper torso and made a plaster impression of his face, on which he based his exquisite bust of the beard­less future president. Lincoln’s life-mask lay neglected for twenty years,...
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