Masonic Temple, McKeesport

Posted by on Nov 24, 2013 in | Comments Off on Masonic Temple, McKeesport It was ninety-five years ago – Tuesday, October 17, 1911, to be precise – that one Ada Atkins of McKeesport, Allegheny County, wrote to a Miss May Hickey of Pretty Prairie, Kansas, a village of slightly more than three hundred residents. (The Census of 1910 counted nearly forty-three thousand residents in heavily industrialized McKeesport, located south of Pittsburgh.) Don’t...
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Principal’s Quarters, Keystone State Normal School, Kutztown, Pa.

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Principal’s Quarters, Keystone State Normal School, Kutztown, Pa. On a post card bearing an image entitled “Principal’s Quarters, Keystone State Normal School, Kutztown, Pa.,” and postmarked April 12, 1910, C. H. Yost inquired of Ella M. Kunkel, “Is the Normal crowded with new students this term? There are more here than there ever were.” Miss Kunkel’s address at West Chester and, especially, “W.C.S.N.S.,” suggests she was a student at what is today West...
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Grand Promenade Walk, Lakemount Park, Altoona, Pa.

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Grand Promenade Walk, Lakemount Park, Altoona, Pa. Evidently subscribing to the classic cliché about a picture being worth a thousand words — or, perhaps, believing Altoona’s Lakemont Park to be a landmark known to one and all — a Mrs. C. T. Hartnell chose not to add her own remarks to a postcard depicting the park’s Grand Promenade Walk. Postmarked July 3, 1906, at Hollidaysburg, the Blair County seat located six miles south of Altoona, the...
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Camp Nepahwin, Canton, Pa.

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Camp Nepahwin, Canton, Pa. Spelled throughout history as Lake Nephawin and as Lake Nepawhin, the sixty-acre lake located in the southwest corner of Bradford County, one mile south of Canton, was originally known as Gillett’s Pond. Popular writer and journalist Grace Greenwood, who had been dubbed “the Patriot” by President Abraham Lincoln for her ardent support of the U. S. Sanitary Commission during the Civil War,...
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Dr. Henry C. Mercer’s Fonthill

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Dr. Henry C. Mercer’s Fonthill Henry Chapman Mercer (1856–1930), scion of a wealthy Doylestown, Bucks County, family was known for many characteristics and traits: well-bred, handsome, inquisitive, erudite, and — to townspeople — decidedly eccentric. He was known for his contributions as a master ceramicist, local historian, writer, archaeologist, ethnologist, museum curator, amateur architect, collector, horticulturist,...
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Masonic Temple, Butler, Pa.

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Masonic Temple, Butler, Pa. The Keystone State Library Association, established in 1901, selected the Butler County seat of Butler in western Pennsylvania for its fifteenth annual meeting in October 1915, and one of the reasons is obvious. Librarians would convene for their first session in the community’s grand Masonic Temple, completed four years earlier. Butler Lodge Number 272, Free and Accepted Masons (F&AM),...
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Duck Pond, River Ridge Farm

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Duck Pond, River Ridge Farm On May 6, 1925, an individual known only as Murray wrote to Harry Snively of Greensburg, Westmoreland County, on a postcard depicting a duck pond at River Ridge Farm near Franklin, Venango County: “Talk about a beautiful sight, you should see those ducks.” River Ridge Farm, the creation of Joseph Crocker Sibley (1850–1926) in 1911, consisted of four duck ponds, six stone bridges, thirteen miles...
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Mountain House, Cresson, Pa.

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Mountain House, Cresson, Pa. Leading a ‘Simple Life’ among the farmers,” wrote EBG on the reverse of a penny postcard depicting the Mountain House at Cresson, Cambria County, one hundred years ago, on August 10, 1908. The writer’s sentiments were obviously facetious — the Mountain House, built in 1880–1881, had been a grand hotel financed by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company (PRR) that drew scores of affluent guests to the...
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Bucktail Monument, Driftwood, PA.

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bucktail Monument, Driftwood, PA. This sounds as if the Bucktails were coming don’t it?” asked an unknown writer to Miss Bessie McPhee of Pittsburgh in a postcard mailed on April 6, 1908, at Driftwood, the second — and last — incorporated borough in Cameron County. Today a community of one hundred residents, Driftwood was incorporated as a borough in 1872; the county seat, Emporium, was incorporated in 1864. The postcard bears a...
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Hotel Washington

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Hotel Washington An unsigned postcard of the Hotel Washington in Chambersburg sent to Roland G. Smith at the Ligonier Motor and Machine Company in Ligonier, Westmoreland County, was postmarked October 19, 1913, nearly fifty years after Confederate forces decimated the Franklin County seat on July 30, 1864. Southern soldiers destroyed 550 buildings and structures in Chambersburg in addition to looting houses and...
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