William Penn’s Side Chair

Posted by on Dec 13, 2016 in | Comments Off on William Penn’s Side Chair Pennsylvania founder and first proprietor William Penn lived in his colony for a total of only four years during two trips of two years each, 1682-84 and 1699-1701. Even before his first visit he had engaged his agent to purchase from the Lenapes land along the Delaware River that would become Pennsbury Manor, intended to be his permanent summer home in America. As fate would have it, however,...
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The Philadelphia Country House by Mark Reinberger and Elizabeth McLean

Posted by on Apr 19, 2016 in | Comments Off on The Philadelphia Country House by Mark Reinberger and Elizabeth McLean The Philadelphia Country House: Architecture and Landscape in Colonial America by Mark Reinberger and Elizabeth McLean Johns Hopkins University Press, 464 pp., cloth $69.95 Architectural historian Reinberger and garden specialist McLean’s Philadelphia Country House is the most complete study ever of the city’s colonial rural residences. It is likely to remain the definitive word on...
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Two Decades of PA Books: An Interview with Brian Lockman

Posted by on Apr 19, 2016 in | Comments Off on Two Decades of PA Books: An Interview with Brian Lockman PA Books is a weekly television series that has been running on the Pennsylvania Cable Network (PCN) for 20 years. Brian Lockman, president and CEO of the Harrisburg-based network, has hosted the program from the beginning, interviewing authors of books related to Pennsylvania. He does 35 to 40 new interviews a year, and PCN reruns past programs frequently. A recent survey indicated that PA...
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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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Pennsylvania Icons: State Treasures Telling the Story of the Commonwealth

Posted by on Apr 19, 2016 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Icons: State Treasures Telling the Story of the Commonwealth   Pennsylvania Icons is a landmark exhibition at The State Museum of Pennsylvania that tells the story of the commonwealth and its people, places, industries, creations and events with more than 400 artifacts and specimens from the museum’s collection. The State Museum contains the largest and most comprehensive Pennsylvania history collection in the world, with a diverse array of objects...
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Pennsylvania Governors Residences Open to the Public

Posted by on Jul 17, 2015 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Governors Residences Open to the Public Pennypacker Mills Pennypacker Mills possesses a lengthy history dating to about 1720 when Hans Jost Hite built the fieldstone house and a gristmill near the Perkiomen Creek, Schwenksville, Montgomery County. Purchased in 1747 by Peter Pennypacker (1710-1770), the house was enlarged and a saw mill and a fulling mill were constructed. The property acquired its name for the three mills. Peter...
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Reimagining William Penn: Janet de Coux and the Creation of the Pennsylvania Icon

Posted by on Jun 19, 2015 in | Comments Off on Reimagining William Penn: Janet de Coux and the Creation of the Pennsylvania Icon In 1944 Pennsylvania was celebrating the 300th anniversary of William Penn’s birthday. More than 2,580 celebrations were held across the commonwealth and the nation, and approximately 1,550 Pennsylvania schools each honored Penn with the planting and dedication of a hemlock, the state tree. These activities coincided with a movement on the part of several state officials and Pennsylvania...
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Curating a New Home for History: A Conversation with W. Fred Kinsey and Irwin Richman

Posted by on Jun 19, 2015 in | Comments Off on Curating a New Home for History: A Conversation with W. Fred Kinsey and Irwin Richman Established institutions rarely get the opportunity to hit the reset button. But that’s what happened with The State Museum of Pennsylvania in the early 1960s, after the long-anticipated William Penn Memorial Museum and Archives Building cleared its last bureaucratic hurdle. Ground was broken north of the State Capitol in Harrisburg, Dauphin County, in January 1962, and by summer Pennsylvania’s...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Jun 19, 2015 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter Summer is a good time to connect with the past in Pennsylvania. The state features an abundance of museums, memorials and historic structures – including the sites on the Pennsylvania Trails of History – that are especially active in the summer, presenting and commemorating our history. Festivals and special events across the commonwealth also link us to our heritage with food,...
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A Home for History: S.K. Stevens and the Campaign for the William Penn Memorial Museum and Archives

Posted by on May 11, 2015 in | Comments Off on A Home for History: S.K. Stevens and the Campaign for the William Penn Memorial Museum and Archives by Curtis Miner On December 23, 1959, Dr. S.K. Stevens (1904-74) sent out a final, end-of-the-year message to members of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC). It came in the form of a brief, typewritten memo, informing them that Governor David L. Lawrence (1889-1966) had that morning signed a spending bill for the construction of a museum and archives building. “I think this...
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