Lost and Found

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lost and Found Lost In May 1946, Pittsburgh area residents approved a bond issue for the development of the Greater Pitts­burgh Airport, hailed at the time as a facility “built for Pittsburghers by Pittsburghers with Pittsburgh products.” Pittsburgh Plate Glass, for instance, provided three acres of an advanced window glass for the terminal that reduced noise, heat, cold, and glare. Architectural...
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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 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Kentuck Knob: Frank Lloyd Wright’s House for I. N. and Bernardine Hagan By Bernardine Hagan The Local History Company, 2005 (220 pages, cloth, $39.95) “This is not a treatise on architecture,” writes Bernardine Hagan in her introduction to Kentuck Knob: Frank Lloyd Wright’s House for I. N. and Bernardine Hagan. “That I will leave to more professional writers. What I...
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Along the Pennsylvania Trails of History

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Along the Pennsylvania Trails of History Fallingwater, designed in 1935 by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Edgar J. Kaufmann family of Pittsburgh, is an American icon, acknowledged worldwide as an architectural masterpiece. Situated above a waterfall on Bear Run, a mountain stream the Kaufmanns loved, at Mill Run in Fayette County, Fallingwater helped define twentieth-century modernism. Upon its completion, the Kaufmann commission became...
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The Architect, The Icon, and The Artist: Welcome to a Visual Celebration of Vision

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Architect, The Icon, and The Artist: Welcome to a Visual Celebration of Vision Shortly after its completion in 1937, Fallingwater, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Edgar J. and Liliane S. Kaufmann above a mountain stream loved by the Pittsburgh couple and their son Edgar Jr., was lauded by critics as an icon of modern American architecture. Perched precariously over a waterfall on Bear Run, near Mill Run in Fayette County, in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, it was...
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Cyclorama Building

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Cyclorama Building A landmark among the approximately 1,328 monuments, memorials, and markers at Gettysburg National Military Park (GNMP) since its dedication on November 19, 1962, the ninety-ninth anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the Cyclorama Building was designed by architects Richard Neutra (1892–1970) and Robert E. Alexander (1907–1992). Neutra moved to the United States in 1923...
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George Nakashima House, Studio, and Workshop

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on George Nakashima House, Studio, and Workshop George Nakashima (1905–1990) was an internationally acclaimed Japanese American architect, modern furniture designer, and woodworker, who won numerous awards for his work and his furniture. He was a leading innovator of twentieth-century furniture design and a father of the American craft movement. He was born in Spokane, Washington, to Katsuharu and Suzu Nakashima, and grew up in the forested...
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Sacred Places in Pennsylvania: Signs of Religious Freedom and Diversity

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Sacred Places in Pennsylvania: Signs of Religious Freedom and Diversity When William Penn established Pennsylvania, he did so in part to create a place where his own faith community, the Religious Society of Friends (or Quakers), could worship freely, just as the Puritans did in Massachusetts and the Baptists in Rhode Island. But Penn went further – he established freedom for other faiths and creeds, welcoming one and all, regardless of their beliefs and...
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