Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Keystone of Democracy: A History of Pennsylvania Workers Howard Harris, editor, Perry K. Blatz, associate editor Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1999 (361 pages; cloth, 24.95; paper, 16.95) “Our greatest debt is to past, current, and future generations of Pennsylvania workers. In telling their story in these pages, we honor their efforts to define and sustain the promise of...
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Letters to the Editor

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letters to the Editor Pure Escapism Hess’s was more than a department store [“Max Hess Jr. Puts Allentown on the Map” by Liz Armstrong Hall, Fall 2004]. It was part magic, part fantasy, part enchantment – pure escapism! When you were young, you didn’t need more than a dollar (for the candy counter) to feel like a million dollars. I’ll always remem­ber the women who tended the...
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PHMC Highlights

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on PHMC Highlights The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, Strasburg, will host “Railway Heritage in the Heart of Penn­sylvania Dutch Country,” the forty-fifth annual conference of the Association of Railway Museums from Wednesday through Sunday, October 5-9. Conference topics include steel car preservation, oral history programs, historical writing, and linking railroading and the public school...
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Letter from President Lyndon Johnson

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letter from President Lyndon Johnson Act 167, signed by Governor David L. Lawrence on June 13, 1961, authorized counties, cities, boroughs, in­corporated towns, and townships in Pennsylvania to create historic districts and provided for the appointment of local Boards of Historical Architectural Review. Following the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, on March 1, 1967, President Lyndon Baines Johnson...
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Karl Mason (1915-1966)

Posted by on Nov 24, 2013 in | Comments Off on Karl Mason (1915-1966) If asked to describe his life’s work, those who remember Karl Mason would most likely exclaim, “He wanted to clean up the world!” If pressed to date the beginning of environmental regulation by a single state agency, many Penn­sylvanians would probably choose 1970, the year the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources – predecessor to the Commonwealth’s...
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Letters

Posted by on Nov 24, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letters Radium, U.S.A I look forward to receiving every edition of Pennsylvania Heritage. The articles are always informative and well written. I learned much about Pittsburgh’s early contributions to the nuclear age from Joel O. Lubenau’s article, “Radium City, U.S.A.” The photographs were intriguing, especially those of Marie Curie touring the Standard Chemical Company’s...
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From the Editor

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on From the Editor What’s new for 2008? How about the New Deal? Or, more precisely, PHMC’s annual theme commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the New Deal in Pennsylvania. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, a seemingly endless roster of economic relief agencies created in the 1930s to alleviate massive unemployment and widespread poverty in the wake of the Great Depression,...
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Executive Director’s Letter

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Executive Director’s Letter In March 2008, Pennsylvania will once again mark the anniversary of the granting of the 1681 Charter to William Penn by England’s King Charles II for the land that became the colony and eventually the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) will conduct Heritage Week activities from Friday through Sunday, March 7–16, to celebrate the Keystone...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Pivotal Pennsylvania: Presidential Politics from FDR to the Twenty-First Century by G. Terry Madonna published by the Pennsylvania Historical Association, 2008; 126 pages, paper, $14.95 Pivotal Pennsylvania: Presidential Politics from FDR to the Twenty-First Century by G. Terry Madonna, one of Pennsylvania’s foremost political analysts, opens with an explanation of how the Democratic Party...
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PHMC Highlights

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on PHMC Highlights Pennsylvania State Archivist David A. Haury, Ph.D., director of PHMC’s Bureau of Archives and History, assisted President Barack Obama’s transition team as it relates to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Haury, president of the Council of State Archivists, Frank Boles, president of the Society of American Archivists, and Tracey Berezansky, president of the National...
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