Defining Boundaries: Pennsylvania vs. Virginia

Posted by on Aug 9, 2024 in | Comments Off on Defining Boundaries: Pennsylvania vs. Virginia In 1774 most of Pennsylvania was focused inward, not outward, as the commonwealth disputed claims from Virginia for the southwest corner of the colony and from Connecticut for the Wyoming Valley and part of the northern tier. While Philadelphians were involved in resisting the British taxation laws, most other Pennsylvanians were preoccupied with troubles on the frontier. Colonial competition...
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Pittsburgh Rising by Edward K. Muller and Rob Ruck

Posted by on Mar 29, 2024 in | Comments Off on Pittsburgh Rising by Edward K. Muller and Rob Ruck Pittsburgh Rising From Frontier Town to Steel City, 1750–1920 by Edward K. Muller and Rob Ruck University of Pittsburgh Press, 290 pp., hardcover $29 To historians Edward Muller and Rob Ruck, class and cultural conflict are central to the Pittsburgh story in its early decades. There is no shortage of examples to support such an interpretation. Their villains are the Scots Irish Presbyterian...
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American Workman by Maxwell King and Louise Lippincott

Posted by on Dec 15, 2022 in | Comments Off on American Workman by Maxwell King and Louise Lippincott American Workman The Life and Art of John Kane by Maxwell King and Louise Lippincott University of Pittsburgh Press, 288 pp., hardcover $40 American Workman: The Life and Art of John Kane reconsiders the legacy of a prominent, self-taught Pittsburgh artist. Kane was a pugnacious, heavy-drinking Scottish immigrant who toiled for 40 years in mines, steel mills and railyards before achieving...
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For Every Room in the House: The Story of Armstrong Cork Co. in Print, Radio and Television

Posted by on Dec 15, 2022 in | Comments Off on For Every Room in the House: The Story of Armstrong Cork Co. in Print, Radio and Television In 1860 Thomas Morton Armstrong, a young son of Scots Irish immigrants from Londonderry, in what is now Northern Ireland, used $300 he had saved from his job as a shipping clerk to purchase a small cork-cutting shop in Pittsburgh. The company was originally named for Armstrong’s business partner, John O. Glass, who suddenly died in 1864. Armstrong’s brother Robert purchased Glass’ share and the...
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A Full-Circle Moment: Three Pittsburgh Institutions Work to Secure August Wilson’s Legacy

Posted by on Sep 12, 2022 in | Comments Off on A Full-Circle Moment: Three Pittsburgh Institutions Work to Secure August Wilson’s Legacy August Wilson seemed perturbed when he met journalist Abiola Sinclair for a May 1990 interview in his favorite nook in the lobby of New York’s famed Edison Hotel. This candid session, published later in New York Amsterdam News, included the exasperated playwright’s charge that — despite having four of his American Century Cycle plays performed on Broadway — his work had not received the...
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A Place for All: Three Stories of Integration in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Sep 12, 2022 in | Comments Off on A Place for All: Three Stories of Integration in Pennsylvania The American Civil Rights Movement focused public attention on segregation in the South and the laws and practices that kept Southern Blacks disenfranchised. By the late 1950s places such as Montgomery, Alabama; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Greensboro, North Carolina, had become household names in the battle to dismantle the racial caste system of “Jim Crow.” But discrimination based on race, much...
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Allegheny Observatory

Posted by on Sep 12, 2022 in | Comments Off on Allegheny Observatory The mysteries of space and time itself have been explored at the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh, ever since it was built to satisfy the celestial curiosity of the Allegheny Telescope Association, a group of amateur astronomy enthusiasts. In 1859 the group selected a site on the hills of North Side (at that time part of Allegheny City), an area free of city lights, providing a perfect spot...
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Western Pennsylvania’s Earliest Chinese Communities

Posted by on Sep 12, 2022 in | Comments Off on Western Pennsylvania’s Earliest Chinese Communities Most Pennsylvanians recognize Philadelphia’s popular Chinatown, yet far fewer know of the significant presence of Chinese immigrants in western Pennsylvania. On April 16, 2022, the Pittsburgh branch of the Organization of Chinese Americans dedicated a Pennsylvania Historical Marker for Pittsburgh Chinatown in front of the Chinatown Inn at 520 Third Avenue in the city. Six months prior, a marker...
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Agnes: Pennsylvania’s Most Devastating Natural Disaster

Posted by on May 13, 2022 in | Comments Off on Agnes: Pennsylvania’s Most Devastating Natural Disaster The late Paul Beers, the longtime columnist for the Harrisburg Patriot-News, once wrote that some Pennsylvanians are “amazingly complacent” about the threat of flooding despite living in a state that is quite vulnerable. Back in the day, around the midpoint of the 20th century, when old-timers in Pennsylvania spoke of “the big one,” they were referring to the 1936 flood — floods plural,...
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The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania: 300 Years of the Highest Court in the Commonwealth

Posted by on May 13, 2022 in | Comments Off on The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania: 300 Years of the Highest Court in the Commonwealth The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania was established on May 22, 1722, in Philadelphia, Bucks and Chester counties, 67 years before the United States Supreme Court came into existence. It is the oldest appellate court in the nation. Its status became official as part of the Judiciary Act of 1722, separating it from the control of the royal governor. The act made significant progress in establishing...
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