Pennsylvania Architectural Heritage: The Preservation Movement in the Keystone State, 1800-1950

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Architectural Heritage: The Preservation Movement in the Keystone State, 1800-1950 The primary focus of this series of four articles is the architectural heritage of Pennsylvania through the past three centuries. However, in the context of history, architecture is neither an isolated creation nor an assured cultural resource for the future. As buildings ore the products of the interaction of many facets of a society, so. too, the preservation of architecture is the result of...
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Iconographic Treasures at the Library Company of Philadelphia

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Iconographic Treasures at the Library Company of Philadelphia In the summer of 1731, Benjamin Franklin later re­counted in his autobiography, “I set on foot my first Proj­ect of a public Nature, that for a Subscription Library.” He encouraged fifty subscribers to contribute forty shillings each for the purchase of books that were considered indispen­sable to colonial Americans, but were generally too expensive for any one individual alone to...
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Letitia’s Grave Secret

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letitia’s Grave Secret The tombstone of Wil­liam Penn’s daughter bears the name Letitia Penn – not her mar­ried name, Letitia Aubrey. One historian, given to conjecture, wondered, “Had she wished it so, remembering her hus­band’s bitter quarrels with her father, and the many other unhappinesses her husband had brought her?” What this woman “wished” on her tombstone no one...
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“I Would Have… A Brew House”

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on “I Would Have… A Brew House” The quality of the beer in his new colony was important enough to William Penn for him to include it in his descrip­tion of Pennsylvania to entice prospective settlers. “Our Drink has been Beer and Punch, made of Rum and Water. Our Beer was mostly made of Molasses, which well boyld, with Sassafras or Pine infused into it, makes very tolerable drink; but now they make Mault, and Mault Drink...
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