Pleistocene Preserved: The Lost Bone Cave of Port Kennedy

Posted by on Feb 20, 2020 in | Comments Off on Pleistocene Preserved: The Lost Bone Cave of Port Kennedy On October 29, 1895, more than 90 members attended a meeting at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Following the routine business of the publication committee’s report and the announcement of one member’s death, Henry Chapman Mercer (1856–1930) rose to speak about the ongoing exploration of a geological feature known as Irwin’s Cave in Montgomery County. The Philadelphia Inquirer...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Feb 3, 2020 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter “You can give humanistic value to almost anything by teaching it historically.” So wrote American philosopher William James in an address he delivered in 1907. Even such disciplines as “geology, economics and mechanics,” he continued, are “humanities when taught with reference to the successive achievements of the geniuses to which these sciences owe their being.” By extension, the features in...
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Meet Andrea W. Lowery, PHMC’s New Executive Director

Posted by on Oct 25, 2019 in | Comments Off on Meet Andrea W. Lowery, PHMC’s New Executive Director In August 2017 the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission (PHMC) appointed Andrea W. Lowery as the new executive director of the agency. A preservationist with more than two decades of experience, Lowery succeeds James M. Vaughan, who retired in July 2017. Lowery has worked for PHMC since 2011, most recently serving as chief of the agency’s Division of Architecture and Preservation...
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Pennsylvania’s Architectural Heritage: Statehouses and Capitols

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania’s Architectural Heritage: Statehouses and Capitols Through the three centuries of Pennsylvania’s history, the build­ings that always have been both the functional and symbolic heart of the Commonwealth have been the seats of government. These statehouses and capitols bespeak much about the governmental structure and social ideals of the respective ages which created them. Indeed, the very change of nomenclature from statehouse to capitol...
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Preserving Pieces of Pennsylvania’s Past: An Inside Look at the Building of the Commonwealth’s Collections

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Preserving Pieces of Pennsylvania’s Past: An Inside Look at the Building of the Commonwealth’s Collections Associations between butterflies and buttons, Conestoga wagons and cannon, sculpture and arrowheads, or fossils and founder William Penn’s original Charter may seem tenuous, even obscure and, perhaps, nonsensical. But a relationship does exist: they are among the one and a half million objects and thirty thousand cubic feet of manuscripts, records, maps and photographs in the custody and...
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Stewart Culin, “Museum Magician”

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Stewart Culin, “Museum Magician” A temple had given up its treasure – ornately carved columns infused with supernatural beliefs – to the man with an imposing air and an eye for danger. He tells the tale: “Then we found ourselves with the column in the moonlight. We knew we must get it away without loss of time. The snoring continued, and the dogs were quiet, but at any moment they might raise an alarm. I...
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George H. Danner: The Retailer and His Relic Rooms

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on George H. Danner: The Retailer and His Relic Rooms In the early 1930s Milton S. Hershey established an Indian Museum in the town which he had built around his chocolate factory. Like the town’s amusement park, ornate theater and fa­mous Starlight Ballroom, the museum was provided as a source of enjoyment and recre­ation for Hershey’s workers and their families. In 1935, in a move which broadened the focus of the original Indian...
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Bucks County

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bucks County As one of the three original counties of Pennsylvania created shortly after William Penn arrived in his nascent colony in 1682, Bucks County has a heritage that reaches back to the very beginnings of the Commonwealth. Long before Penn’s arrival, the intrepid settlers of the Dutch and Swedish colonies farther down the Delaware River had ex­plored the wooded banks of the river as far as the...
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You Can Go Home Again: An Interview with James A. Michener

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on You Can Go Home Again: An Interview with James A. Michener James A Michener is a man of diverse talents, boundless energy, and seemingly countless interests. He is naturally inquisitive, passionately curious. He is fascinated by the world around him and the people who inhabit it. He collects stories about far-away places as effortlessly as one gathers seashells on the shoreline in summer. He is the Ultimate Con­noisseur. Of people. Of places. Of things....
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Chester County Centennial The Chester County Historical Society, West Chester, has marked its one hundredth anniversary by mounting an exhibition entitled “Presenting Your Past: A Centennial Celebration.” The exhibit highlights the extraordinary collections acquired by the historical society during its first century. Objects on view include significant pieces selected from the...
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