The 100th Pennsylvania Farm Show: A Blue Ribbon State Fair

Posted by on Apr 19, 2016 in | Comments Off on The 100th Pennsylvania Farm Show: A Blue Ribbon State Fair The Pennsylvania Farm Show is the largest indoor agricultural event in the United States. Each year hundreds of thousands of people flock to the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center in Harrisburg, Dauphin County, to experience apples and alpacas, butter sculpture and blue-ribbon contests, milkshakes and mushrooms, square dancing and grape stomping, rodeos and tractor pulling, and...
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Camp Elder Civil War Paroled POW Camp

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on Camp Elder Civil War Paroled POW Camp Located in Westtown Township, Chester County, Camp Elder was a holding facility for the Union’s paroled Prisoners of War (POWs) from mid-July to August 1863. Because of logistical problems associated with holding enemy prisoners during the American Civil War both Union and Confederate armies issued hundreds of thousands of paroles to soldiers captured in battle. Terms of this practice were...
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Spalding Memorial Library – Tioga Point Museum

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Spalding Memorial Library – Tioga Point Museum The Spalding Memorial Library-Tioga Point Mu­seum, in Athens, Bradford County, is an important civic building designed by architect Albert Hamilton Kipp (1850-1906) in the Colonial Revival and Classical Revival styles. Kipp studied with James Renwick, architect of New York’s Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and the Smithsonian Institution’s “Castle” in Washington, D.C....
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September 2001 Meeting of Historic Preservation Board

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on September 2001 Meeting of Historic Preservation Board In the dizzying aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans realized that their lives would be forever changed. Terrorism even impacted the routine – and frequently mundane – ways in which business had been conducted. For its September 2001 meeting-held, incidentally, on Tuesday, September 11 – the Commonwealth’s Historic...
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Chester Heights Camp Meeting

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Chester Heights Camp Meeting By the outbreak of the Civil War, Methodism had become the largest Christian denomination in the country, tracing its dramatic rise from a reform movement in the Episcopal Church to successful camp meetings. Methodist circuit riders visited local communities and conducted large public religious meetings, some of which lasted many days, with a succession of commanding speakers, spirited singing,...
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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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Ridgway Historic District

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Ridgway Historic District In 1833, Ridgway was platted as an unincorporated village and named for wealthy Philadelphia Quaker Jacob Ridgway (1768-1843), who owned more than one hundred thousand acres in north­central Pennsylvania. The village, originally located in Jefferson County, became the Elk County seat upon the county’s creation in 1843. Ridgway, incor­porated as a borough in 1881, emerged as an important...
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Lorraine Apartments

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lorraine Apartments The Lorraine Apartments was among Philadelphia’s earliest high-rise apartment houses. Designed by Philadelphia architect Willis G. Hale (1848-1907), the ten-story building, built in 1892-1893 in the heart of the burgeoning nouveau riche neighborhood of North Broad Street, exemplified the rapidly changing possibilities of urban life that swept across the country at the time. Its innovations...
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Israel and Samuel Lupfer Tannery Site and House

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Israel and Samuel Lupfer Tannery Site and House During the nineteenth century, tanning was an essential component of Pennsylva­nia’s industrial economy. Prior to the out­break of the Civil War, tanneries in the Keystone State’s rural areas were as ubiquitous as gristmills; in 1860, for example, more than one thousand tanneries were in operation and all but one county had at least one. These tanneries ranged in size from a...
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Marking Pennsylvania’s African American History

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Marking Pennsylvania’s African American History Charged with collecting, preserving, and interpreting more than three centuries of the Keystone State’s history and culture — as well as millions of years of its prehistory — the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) has launched a number of widely acclaimed, innovative, and popular public history programs over the years. One of its most popular is the state historical marker...
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