Martin Ritt Takes on The Molly Maguires

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Martin Ritt Takes on The Molly Maguires Far from the glitter and glamour of Hollywood, in a remote mountain range of Pennsylvania, the film industry’s best and brightest gathered in the late 1960s to make a film that has been described as a dismal financial failure and, ironically, an extraordinary critical suc­cess. Before cameras whirred in and around the communities of Hazleton, Luzerne County, Jim Thorpe, Carbon County,...
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“Thank God there are only three McCormicks”

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on “Thank God there are only three McCormicks” The McCormick boys arrived at St. Michael’s Home for Boys in July 1939. Art was seventeen, I was fourteen, and Mike was seven – a trio of orphans who would now live with two hundred and fifty hard-knock boys at this Catholic orphanage in Hoban Heights, near Pittston in Luzerne County. Those were hard times, and many boys at St. Mike’s came from rough backgrounds. They came from...
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Life on Wheels: Camping in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Life on Wheels: Camping in Pennsylvania Does father crave to fish for trout and bass and pike and musky? Take him auto-touring. Does sister want to dip in the surf, or study art, or see the world? Toke her automobile vacationing. Has grand-dad the “hoof and mouth disease” so that he craves the green of far-away courses? Auto-comp him to a dozen golf courses. Does mother sigh for a rest from doily routines? Take her...
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Wyoming Monument

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Wyoming Monument Northeastern Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley was a focus of British military strategy during the American Revolution because its three thousand residents constituted the largest population center on the Susquehanna River. The British believed that by eliminating this stronghold of American patriotism they could dominate the frontier. Major John Butler organized a force of two hundred and...
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Radio Station KDKA

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Radio Station KDKA On Tuesday evening, November 2, 1920, about one thousand people in the Pittsburgh area listened to the results of the presidential election of candidates Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox on “wireless” receivers. Transmitted by a one hundred-watt station that would become KDKA, this was something new-radio broadcasting. And radio would revolutionize communication just as the...
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St. Gabriel’s Catholic Parish Complex

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on St. Gabriel’s Catholic Parish Complex St. Gabriel’s Catholic Parish Complex in Hazleton, Luzerne County, is more than a collection of imposing ecclesiastical edifices. The complex is significant because it reflects the parish’s status as the city’s first Catholic parish, and is integrally associated with the growth of its Catholic population stimulated by the development of the anthracite industry. Hazleton grew...
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Baseball’s One-Armed Wonder: An Interview with the Late Great, Pete Gray

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Baseball’s One-Armed Wonder: An Interview with the Late Great, Pete Gray On Sunday, May 20, 1945, thirty-six thousand spectators packed Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx, for a doubleheader that pitted the New York Yankees against the defending American league champions, the St. Louis Browns. The Yankees, who had finished in third place in the previous season, six games behind the Browns, had something to prove that afternoon. Even though the World War II had stripped...
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General Stores and Old Loft Building at Harriman Yard

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on General Stores and Old Loft Building at Harriman Yard The United States’ late entry into World War I required the expedient creation of naval resources, including battleships and transport ships . The Emergency Fleet Corporation, established by the U.S. Shipping Board on April 16, 1917, to provide for the procurement, construction, and disposal of merchant vessels, retained the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation, a private ship manufacturer,...
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Cast Iron Kitchen Stove at Eckley Miners’ Village

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Cast Iron Kitchen Stove at Eckley Miners’ Village Many immigrants working in northeastern Pennsylvania’s anthracite region in the nineteenth century lived in “patches,” small villages laid out and owned by coal companies adjacent to their mining operations. Of their possessions, immigrants prized their cast iron stoves not only for the comforts – cooking and heating – they provided, but also took great pride in...
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Survival of an American Boom Town

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Survival of an American Boom Town No stirring debates reverberate through the chambers of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall; white-hot molten steel no longer pours out of the fiery cauldrons in the sprawling mills of Pittsburgh and Bethlehem; and little coal ripped from the earth by giant steam shovels in Carbon, Schuylkill, Luzerne, and Lackawanna Counties in the Keystone State’s anthracite region. As surprising as...
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