Currents

Journey in Time Prom the first interior scenes of Pennsbury Manor, in which light seems to caress each object-pewter bowl, chair, blanket chest-viewers of “Historic Pennsylvania: A Journey to America’s Past” will know this is masterful cinematography. As the camera moves a short distance from the mansion’s front door to the lush banks of the Delaware River, a dazzling...
read more

Currents

A Glass Act By the opening of the twentieth century, western Pennsylvania, with twenty-nine companies in full production, had emerged as the undisputed glass manufacturing capital of the United States (see “Currents,” Spring 1998, and “Curator’s Choice,” Summer 1998). The manufacture of glass in the region can be traced to the late eighteenth century, when both the...
read more

Shorts

Offering a comprehensive view of the emergence and influence of French impressionism on American artists of the late nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, “American Impressionism from the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery” will be on view at the Southern Alleghe­nies Museum of Art at Ligonier Valley from Friday, March 2, through Sunday, April 22, 2001. For more information,...
read more

Shorts

“Forging Freedom: The Influence of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society on Civil Rights Movements” is on view at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania through Friday, August 31 [2001]. The Pennsylvania Abolition Society was founded in Philadelphia in the late eighteenth century to combat prejudice, eliminate slavery, and create opportunities for blacks. For more information, write:...
read more

Shorts

On Friday and Saturday, July 26-27 [2002], the Slate Belt Heritage Center, in Bangor, will host “Slate Belt Heritage Days,” replete with walking tours, local history talks, horse-drawn carriage rides, story­tellers, crafts demonstrations, and a guid­ed tour of an operating slate quarry. The history of the slate industry in Northampton County is traced to the mid-nineteenth century,...
read more

Letters to the Editor

Brick-End Barns Upon receiving the Winter 2002 edition of Pennsylvania Heritage, I was fascinated to see “Lost & Found,” showing a fanci­ful brick-end barn in Lancaster County that was, unfortunately, demolished for the building of an outlet mall. I have discovered a brick-end barn still standing in Antrim Township, Franklin County, that is similar to the one illustrated. In...
read more

Shorts

Roy Cleveland Nuse (1885-1975) played an integral part in both the Bucks County and the Philadelphia art scenes. As a teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, coupled with his exhibitions throughout his long career, he influenced several generations of artists. He made many portraits and figure paintings of his six children, relatives, and neighbors. Nuse lived on two different...
read more

Duck Pond, River Ridge Farm

On May 6, 1925, an individual known only as Murray wrote to Harry Snively of Greensburg, Westmoreland County, on a postcard depicting a duck pond at River Ridge Farm near Franklin, Venango County: “Talk about a beautiful sight, you should see those ducks.” River Ridge Farm, the creation of Joseph Crocker Sibley (1850–1926) in 1911, consisted of four duck ponds, six stone bridges, thirteen miles...
read more

Built by the New Deal

With the nation mired in the grim depths of the Great Depression, industrial Pennsylvania was far from being immune to the financial instability with the closing of 5,000 manufacturing firms and the loss of 270,000 factory jobs by 1933. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched his New Deal, a series of innovative programs targeted to giving work to the unemployed, stabilizing a downward...
read more

Pictures From Roads Less Traveled

Fred Maurice Yenerall (1907–1983) wasn’t a professional photographer; photography was a therapeutic hobby he took up as a way to cope after the death of his son at the age of fourteen. Wayne Theodore Yenerall, born in 1937, rode his bicycle into a parked milk delivery truck in mid-August 1951. Fred Yenerall was the son of immigrant Theodore Antonio Yenerall (1869– 1948), from Colliano, Italy;...
read more