A Full-Circle Moment: Three Pittsburgh Institutions Work to Secure August Wilson’s Legacy

Posted by on Sep 12, 2022 in | Comments Off on A Full-Circle Moment: Three Pittsburgh Institutions Work to Secure August Wilson’s Legacy August Wilson seemed perturbed when he met journalist Abiola Sinclair for a May 1990 interview in his favorite nook in the lobby of New York’s famed Edison Hotel. This candid session, published later in New York Amsterdam News, included the exasperated playwright’s charge that — despite having four of his American Century Cycle plays performed on Broadway — his work had not received the...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Sep 12, 2022 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter The State Museum of Pennsylvania has recently installed in its first-floor gallery a long-term exhibition, A Place for All, focusing on three episodes of the Civil Rights Movement in the commonwealth — struggles for integration at Highland Park swimming pool in Pittsburgh, Girard College preparatory school in Philadelphia, and the suburban community of Levittown in Bucks County. The stories were...
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Crawford Grill No. 2

Posted by on Mar 19, 2021 in | Comments Off on Crawford Grill No. 2 The Sochatoff Building sits at the corner of Wylie Avenue and Elmore Street in Pittsburgh’s Hill District neighborhood. This three-story building was constructed in 1917 and would later hold the nationally renowned jazz club Crawford Grill No. 2 between 1945 and 2003. The club, which occupied the entire first floor of the building, was established by African American businessman William Augustus...
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Smoketown by Mark Whitaker

Posted by on Dec 11, 2019 in | Comments Off on Smoketown by Mark Whitaker Smoketown The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance by Mark Whitaker Simon & Schuster, 432 pp., cloth $30 Smoketown tells a story at once inspiring and tragic: the tale of how Pittsburgh became home to one of the nation’s most dynamic black communities before urban redevelopment and civil unrest gutted its vibrant cultural center, the Hill District. The Hill, once dubbed the...
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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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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf A Century of Forest Resources Education at Penn State: Serving Our Forests, Waters, Wildlife, and Wood Industries By Henry D. Gerhold Published by the Penn State University Press, 2007; 280 pages, cloth, $35.00 A Century of Forest Resources Education at Penn State: Serving Our Forests, Waters, Wildlife, and Wood Industries chronicles the origin and development of the Pennsylvania State...
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From the Editor

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on From the Editor After a long winter of brutal back-to-back snowstorms, and a cool spring, summer is finally here! And what better time to discover all that Pennsylvania has to offer travelers of all ages! This edition of Pennsylvania Heritage is your “go to” guide for exploring the Keystone State’s culture and heritage-especially our African American history. The Pennsylvania Historical and...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert K. Wittman, with John Shiffman published by Broadway Paperbacks, 2011; 324 pages, paper, $15.00 While employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Philadelphia, Robert King Wittman created and was senior investigator of the bureau’s Art Crime Team. He arrived in 1988 in Philadelphia, “home to two of the...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Palace of Culture: Andrew Carnegie’s Museums and Library in Pittsburgh by Robert J. Gangewere published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011; 332 pages, cloth, $35.00 Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) is remembered as one of the world’s great philanthropists. As a boy, he witnessed the benevolence of Colonel James Anderson, a prosperous iron maker, who opened his personal library of several...
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