City in a Park by James McClelland and Lynn Miller

Posted by on Sep 1, 2016 in | Comments Off on City in a Park by James McClelland and Lynn Miller City in a Park: A History of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park System by James McClelland and Lynn Miller Temple University Press, 392 pp., cloth $39.50 A substantial, richly illustrated book highlighting the significance of Fairmount Park and its place in the larger urban parks movement has been long overdue. City in a Park has finally arrived to fill that void. Augmented with 150...
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Free-Thinking, 19th-Century Style

Posted by on Dec 2, 2013 in | Comments Off on Free-Thinking, 19th-Century Style Francis Ellingwood Abbot (1836–1903) was nothing if not determined. In 1872, as editor of The Index, the nation’s leading free-thought magazine, he began to muster the full force of his small army of subscribers against what was being called “the God-in-the-Constitution amendment.” A philosopher and theologian, he sought to reconstruct theology in accordance with scientific methodology. From the...
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Pittsburgh’s Park of a Century

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pittsburgh’s Park of a Century Currently ranked first as the Most Livable City by the Rand-McNally annual survey, Pittsburgh is reveling in media exposure comparable to the boosterism of the town of Zenith which writer Sinclair Lewis satirized in his novel, Babbit. Accompanying the zealous, self-proclaimed promotion, however, has been a healthy dose of self­-examination, with the city’s less enviable qualities suddenly...
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Siegmund Lubin: The Forgotten Filmmaker

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Siegmund Lubin: The Forgotten Filmmaker In Philipsburg, the summer of 1914 ended with a crash that could be heard for miles and seen around the world. On the slopes of Centre County’s Collision Field, a stadium formed by nature, five thousand festive, flag-waving spectators gathered to watch the wrecking of two great Pittsburgh & Susquehanna Railroad locomotives. Bands entertained the Labor Day celebrants with musical...
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Crews, Clubs and Clubhouses

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Crews, Clubs and Clubhouses Long before the light of the rising sun touches the tops of the tall silver buildings of center-city Philadelphia, turn­ing the sky to the color of gunmetal, morning has dawned on Boathouse Row. Morning comes early to that small swatch of the Schuylkill River, and to the ten old Victorian era structures renowned throughout the world as a center for rowing – and recognized by...
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The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts: An Ideal and a Symbol

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts: An Ideal and a Symbol By 1805, the year the Pennsylvania Acad­emy of the Fine Arts was founded, Phila­delphia had achieved a large measure of political, social and economic stability. It had been the nation’s capital and contin­ued to thrive as a center of banking and commerce. The largest city in the United States at the opening of the nineteenth century, it was arguably the center of culture, with Boston its...
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The Battle of Gettysburg Series – By Peter Frederick Rothermel (1812-1895)

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Battle of Gettysburg Series – By Peter Frederick Rothermel (1812-1895) Perhaps the most impressive item of public art in the capital, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is the monumental “Battle of Gettysburg, Pickett’s Charge,” by Peter Frederick Rothermel. Its sheer size, over sixteen feet high by more than thirty-two feet wide, and its theatrical composition, make it an over-powering experience. The “Battle of Gettysburg,” is located on the...
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Mailbox

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Mailbox For continuing research, as well as a forthcoming article in Pennsylvania Heritage, on Philadelphia’s historic Fairmount Water Works, information and ephemera relating to the Fairmount Park Aquarium are being collected. The attraction, one of the first aquariums in the United States, opened to the public in 1911 in the engine house, began deteriorating after World War II, and finally dosed...
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A Walk on the Wild Side: Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Creek

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Walk on the Wild Side: Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Creek At one time deli­cately depicted on dainty lamp shades, the Wissahickon Creek has offered generations of Philadelphians a verdant retreat from the stress of urban life. It is a place to meet old friends, engage in spirited recreational activities, or simply seek solitude. Each person’s reason for seeking respite along the Wissahickon is as unique as the individual, but all share a common...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Forging A New Deal: Johnstown and the Great Depression, 1929-1941 by Curtis Miner Johnstown Area Heritage Association, 1993 (81 pages, paper, $7.95) Published to accompany a major museum installation by the same title (see “Currents,” spring 1994), Forging A New Deal: Johnstown and the Great Depression, 1929-1941, is a richly written and copiously illustrated exhibition catalogue...
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