On a bright, crisp day in Harrisburg last October, several SHPO staff members toured Lincoln Cemetery. Several years before, Rachael Keri Williams, a descendent of ancestors buried at Lincoln Cemetery, started Saving Our Ancestors Legacy (SOAL)—an organization of descendants working to restore Lincoln Cemetery’s grounds, and reconnect the community with the cemetery’s story and the lives of those laid to rest on its grounds. This February, Lincoln Cemetery was presented to the Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Board who approved the nomination. It will hopefully be listed in the National Register later this year.
Looking up while shading our eyes, we stood in awe under the 180-foot-tall ornate spired bell tower designed in the nineteenth century by renowned architect, Edward T. Potter, and the rusticated brownstone exterior with Gothic ornamentation, pinnacles, and tracery executed by master mason, George Maltzberger.
On February 13, 2025, PA SHPO’s Historic Property Inspection Program (HPIP) staff ventured to Reading, Pennsylvania for a property inspection of the Christ Episcopal Church of Reading (PA-SHARE Resource # 2018RE00954), a contributing resource within Reading’s Callowhill Historic District (PA-SHARE Resource # 1979RE00447).
This week’s 2025 Community Initiative Award winner spotlight is on Lincoln Cemetery and Saving Our Ancestors Legacy (SOAL), the group preserving the cemetery, in the Borough of Penbrook, Dauphin County.
This week’s 2025 Community Initiative Award winner spotlight is on the First Cambria African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church congregation in the City of Johnstown, Cambria County.
This week’s 2025 Community Initiative Award winner spotlight is on the rehabilitation of the Lansdowne Theater in the Borough of Lansdowne, Delaware County.
May is Historic Preservation Month! Since 2018, PA SHPO has celebrated by announcing the newest Community Initiative Award winners.
Odds are if you ask a historian of industry to tell you about The Industrial Revolution, they will respond with, “Which one? There have been four.” If they are from Pennsylvania, they may even add that Pennsylvania has many places associated with all four of them. So, what are these four industrial revolutions and what Pennsylvania places are associated with them, you ask?
NAGPRA—or the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act—was signed into law on November 16, 1990. At its core, NAGPRA was created to address the historical mistreatment of Native American human remains and cultural items. NAGPRA requires federal agencies and cultural institutions (e.g. museums, universities, state agencies, and local governments) that receive federal funds to repatriate (or return) ancestors, sacred objects, funerary objects, and objects of cultural patrimony to lineal descendants and culturally affiliated federally recognized tribes and nations.
Driving around the country, you may have seen something rising from a field that resembles a large bowling pin. Or, more likely, you have driven past these without a second glance. This was my experience with the East Texas VOR/DME. As part of my job as a cultural resource specialist for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), I determine if properties around projects are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. I have driven the State Route 78 corridor through the Lehigh Valley an uncountable number of times but never noticed this particular building. The property is adjacent to the highway where we were proposing work, so I decided to find out more about it.
In the late 1980s, the City of Harrisburg began to experience economic rejuvenation under the driving force of the newly elected mayor, Stephen Reed. One of his projects was the revitalization of City Island, situated in the middle of the Susquehanna River.
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