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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Wildwood Park

Posted by on Nov 24, 2013 in | Comments Off on Wildwood Park Tucked away north of downtown Har­risburg, just above the campus of Harris­burg Area Community College (HACC), is Wildwood Lake Sanctuary, a preserve of more than two hundred acres that traces its roots to the City Beautiful Movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen­turies. As a child, J. Horace Mcfarland (1859-1948) spent countless hours at Wetzel’s Swamp, studying the...
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Legislative Route 1 Sycamore Allée

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Legislative Route 1 Sycamore Allée One of the more unusual additions to the National Register of Historic Places is the Legislative Route 1 Sycamore Allée, running one mile north and south of Halifax, through Halifax and Reed Townships, in northern Dauphin County. (An allée is a French term for formally planted trees, shrubs, or hedges lining both sides of a walk or drive.) Planted in 1922, the allée is an important example of...
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U.S. Sanitary Commission Great Central Fair

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on U.S. Sanitary Commission Great Central Fair Soon after the outbreak of the American Civil War it became apparent that sanitary conditions in camps and on the battlefields were less than ideal. A group of women in New York first organized efforts to improve conditions and provide comfort to soldiers. Similar groups throughout the North also began to form and it became clear that efforts would be more efficient if overseen by the federal...
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