Blog of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office

Category: Post WWII

Reflecting on Year One of the Pennsylvania Baseline Survey

In late 2020, PA SHPO launched an ambitious, large-scale architectural survey called the Pennsylvania Baseline Survey, with a goal of adding approximately 27,000 new resources in 52 different counties over three years. In Year One, over 7,000 new records were added to PA-SHARE – just from Baseline Survey! Read on to learn about a few of the interesting finds…

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Celebrating African American History at Carver Court

As part of our Preservation50 activities during this milestone year, we’d like to share some stories we think showcase the people and projects that celebrate, protect, and promote important pieces of Pennsylvania’s heritage.  The first story we want to share is about the Carver Court neighborhood in Caln Township, Chester County, just on the edge of Coatesville.  This week’s blog post celebrates the recent efforts made by Carver Court’s community members, a group made up of current and former residents, government officials and entities, historians, and more.  The happy outcome for this story is the listing of Carver Court in the National Register of Historic Places on May 31, 2016.  Continue reading

School Daze

No, this isn’t a review of Spike Lee’s 1988 movie.  I’m referring to my state of mind when I think about all of the work I’ve done with public schools in Philadelphia over the past few months.

As you may remember from this post, I joined BHP in July and my first assignment was to complete the survey component of a larger project to document Philadelphia elementary and secondary public schools of all types, styles, and dates.  I had a good start on the survey work thanks to the headway my predecessor made in 2013 by assembling lists and survey maps, which are organized by zip code.  My school daze started when I realized that there were about 300 public schools that qualified for this reconnaissance-level survey.  And, even more intimidating, that 205 still needed to be surveyed before school started on September 8thContinue reading

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