Preserving Bartram’s Garden: Recent Restoration of the House, Garden and Riverfront

Posted by on Apr 19, 2016 in | Comments Off on Preserving Bartram’s Garden: Recent Restoration of the House, Garden and Riverfront Sitting on 45 acres of pastoral landscape, the Colonial-era house at Bartram’s Garden has long been recognized as a Philadelphia architectural landmark and one of the first historic buildings preserved as a public park in Pennsylvania. John Bartram (1699-1777), the first American-born botanist, began construction shortly after he purchased the farm of 102 acres in the fall of 1728 in what...
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Shorts

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Shorts The descendants of natural­ist John Bartram and members of the John Bartram Associa­tion will celebrate the centennials of the association and the family reunion during the weekend of June 25-27 [1993]. The event will feature tours of Historic Bartram’s Garden, speakers, bus tours, and a gala picnic on the grounds to commemorate the family’s first reunion in 1893. To obtain...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Thomas Eakins edited by John Wilmerding Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994 (212 pages, cloth, $49.95) “Frank,” “brutal,” “raw,” “uncompro­mising,” “diabolically realistic,” and “manly” were terms once used to describe the work of Philadelphian Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), one of the greatest American painters of the...
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Like Father, Like Son: The Extraordinary Bartrams

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Like Father, Like Son: The Extraordinary Bartrams An unusual man, of seemingly boundless talent and insatiable curiosity, John Bartram (1699-1777) was many things to many people. Although primarily regarded as a botanist, he might also have been considered a paleontologist, an archaeol­ogist, a geologist, a limnologist, a conchologist, an ethnologist, and so on. Like Thomas Jefferson, he was a prime example of that rare, almost unique,...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents White Elephants Baseball historians generally consider Connie Mack (1862-1956) the paragon of managers. His knowledge of the game, professional disposition, and ability to acquire and, more importantly, manage players captured the attention of sports enthusiasts during a time when the national pastime was riddled with scandal, permeated with intemperance, and punctuated by rowdyism. Connie Mack...
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Growing Bigger and Better Year by Year

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Growing Bigger and Better Year by Year At noon on Saturday, November 24, 1827, fifty-three prominent Philadelphians gathered at the old Franklin Institute, then located on Seventh Street, in response to a newspaper advertisement calling for the formation of an organization devoted to the “highly instructive and interesting science” of horticulture. Since that inaugural meeting – nearly one hundred and seventy-five...
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