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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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Sep 12, 2022 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter The State Museum of Pennsylvania has recently installed in its first-floor gallery a long-term exhibition, A Place for All, focusing on three episodes of the Civil Rights Movement in the commonwealth — struggles for integration at Highland Park swimming pool in Pittsburgh, Girard College preparatory school in Philadelphia, and the suburban community of Levittown in Bucks County. The stories were...
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Stability and Change: Culture During Three Periods

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Stability and Change: Culture During Three Periods “Religion, … the best bond of human society, provided man did not err in the meaning of that excellent word.” – William Penn   Culture, broadly de­fined, is the way of life of a group of people; it includes all their behavioral patterns, beliefs and ar­tistic expressions. Culture is not static; it varies over time and place. Culture does not arise in a vacuum; it...
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Delaware County: Where Pennsylvania Began

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Delaware County: Where Pennsylvania Began Delaware County is part of the densely populated belt around Philadelphia, stretching from the city’s western boundary to the circular Delaware state line. Covering approx­imately 185 square miles, it is the third smallest Pennsylvania county yet the fourth largest in population. Its southern boundary is formed by the Delaware River, from which the county takes its name. The site of early...
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Clinton County: Still Part of Penn’s Woods

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Clinton County: Still Part of Penn’s Woods Clinton County, one of the sixth-class counties of Pennsyl­vania, occupies 900 square miles of river valley and mountain land near the geographical center of the state. Nearly two-thirds of the area re­mains forested, al though most of the trees are second growth after a near denuding of the land by a booming lumber industry in the second half of the last century. It was in the wood­lands of...
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The Erie Warner: From Movie Palace to Movie House to Civic Center

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Erie Warner: From Movie Palace to Movie House to Civic Center Once upon a time, brightly lit marquees of movie palaces of Pennsylvania’s streets dazzled the eyes of pleasure seekers. Today, the genre, described as possibly “the most dis­tinctly American contribution to archi­tectural history,” is all but extinct. And when a survivor is found, as on Erie’s State Street, the structure is a reminder of the gaudy and the phony, the...
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Eagles Mere: Of Cottages and Kings

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Eagles Mere: Of Cottages and Kings No longer defending their fortifications from hostile Indi­ans nor protecting their territory from grasping foreign governments, late nineteenth century Americans – encouraged by the prosperity of the rampant Industrial Revolution, as well as improved transportation systems – were able to indulge in but one of the many advan­tages of peacetime prosperity: the pursuit of pleasure. And...
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Pennsylvania’s First Television Station: “Loving What We Were Doing”

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania’s First Television Station: “Loving What We Were Doing” No champagne corks popped at Philadel­phia’s old Philco plant on October 17, 1941, to celebrate. The achievement failed to rate even a few lines in local newspapers as reports of the increasingly grim drama unfolding in Eu­rope took chilling precedence. Like so many of the seemingly minor events that herald major changes in our way of living, America’s first commercial network...
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Ben Solowey: The Thing Speaks for Itself

Posted by on Nov 27, 2013 in | Comments Off on Ben Solowey: The Thing Speaks for Itself In a career that spanned more than six decades, Ben Solowey (1900-1978), painted, sculpted and created exactly as he wanted. He paid no attention to what was fashionable or lucrative at the moment, cultivated no distinguished patrons, sought little publicity and asked for no exhibitions; unsolicited, the work nevertheless came to him. Although he gained renown for his portraits of the American...
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“Dapper Dan” Flood, Pennsylvania’s Legendary Congressman

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on “Dapper Dan” Flood, Pennsylvania’s Legendary Congressman During the early morning hours of Friday, June 23, 1972, U. S. Representative Daniel J. Flood sat work­ing in his Washington apartment when news of the devastation in his congressional district in northeast­ern Pennsylvania reached him. Rains of tropical storm Agnes had caused the Susquehanna River to rise forty feet. Water was pouring over the dikes protecting the twenty-two communities...
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