Month: August 2016

August’s SHPO Shout-Out!

August 31, 2016 / Shelby Weaver Splain / 0 Comments

It’s that time again!

As some of you may know, the National Park Service highlighted Pennsylvania in their #50for50 social media campaign earlier this month. This initiative is part of their broader effort to celebrate and recognize the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act this year. Each week, NPS has been promoting the interesting, meaningful, and successful historic preservation work being done in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. (FYI, this week is South Carolina’s turn!)

Here at PHMC, we participated by adding the #50for50 and #Preservation50 hashtags to all of the preservation-related posts on the Pennsylvania Trails of History Facebook page and @PHMC Twitter feed. I think NPS could have featured Pennsylvania’s successes for a year and still not have gotten through them all, but alas, we need to share the limelight. So, I thought it would be a great idea to share with you some of the stories that didn’t get aired that week and that we haven’t covered in previous posts and Shout-Outs.

1803 George Armstrong house, approximately 17 x 17 feet, now at Depreciation Lands Museum. Photograph by Charles Richmond, 2013.

Marketing Archaeology: A Non-Scientific Survey about Public Outreach Tools

August 24, 2016 / Guest Contributor / 2 Comments

Fostering a public appreciation for historic resources and archaeology is one of the most important keys to protecting our history.

Unfortunately, many cultural resources professionals struggle with how to make their work accessible and interesting to the general public. In this blog post, we take on this challenge and announce the launch of a non-scientific, but very intriguing experiment to explore how the public responds to different avenues of communication – brochures, social media and web tools. Continue reading

Talking Local Preservation at FORUM 2016 in Mobile

August 17, 2016 / Cory Kegerise / 0 Comments

Every two years, the National Alliance of Preservation Commissions hosts a conference unlike any other – an event focused on providing training and education on issues relevant to historic preservation commissions, review boards, and local governments. FORUM is a truly national event, drawing participants from all over the country to share ideas, war stories, and best practices for making local preservation efforts more effective. You might remember that FORUM 2014 was held in Philadelphia and attracted nearly 800 attendees from 48 states! Mobile, Alabama played host to FORUM 2016 from July 27-31, and nearly 600 people gathered to bask in the balmy Gulf Coast weather and Southern hospitality, including a few of us from Pennsylvania. Here are some of the highlights. Continue reading

Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Tax Credit Year 3 Recap

August 10, 2016 / Scott Doyle / 3 Comments

Due to Fiscal Year 2015-2016 budget challenges, the status of Year 3 of Pennsylvania’s Historic Preservation Tax Credit program was up in the air through March 2016. With the enactment of a budget, there was a brief application window with a March 24, 2016 deadline. The shortened budget period did impact the total number of applications to the Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) as the total decreased from 30 in the second round to 23 applications for the third round.

PHMC quickly reviewed the applications to ensure applicants owned qualified historic buildings and that proposed rehabilitation plans met the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation. As the qualified applications far exceed the limited $3 million in available credits, DCED used a fair and balanced selection process based on a first -come, first serve basis with regional distribution to select the first round of projects. Continue reading

Highway Planning on a Landscape Scale: The Next Generation

August 3, 2016 / Guest Contributor / 1 Comment

by Brenda Barrett, Living Landscape Observer

What happens when a highway project long planned to improve the functionality of the overall transportation system runs up against newer approaches of planning on a landscape scale? Continue reading