Month: February 2014

Getting to Know the Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Board

February 26, 2014 / Andrea L. MacDonald / 1 Comment

If you haven’t participated in a Pennsylvania National Register nomination you may not have experienced a Historic Preservation Board meeting. But that shouldn’t stop you! The meetings are open to the public and we welcome all preservation aficionados to attend a future meeting. The 2014 schedule is posted on our website. The nominations to be reviewed at an upcoming meeting will also be posted to the website about one month prior to the scheduled meeting.

The purpose of the Historic Preservation Board is to provide expert judgments about the historical, architectural, and archeological significance of resources in Pennsylvania as authorized by Section 101 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended, and Sections 504 and 505 of the Pennsylvania History Code. Continue reading

Offbeat Outings: Vandergrift

February 19, 2014 / Tom Held / 6 Comments

Offbeat Outings is a bi-monthly series that highlights the travels of BHP staff as they experience history first-hand throughout Pennsylvania.

When some people plan to go on an historic vacation they think of places to visit like the Egyptian pyramids at Giza, Colonial Williamsburg, Stonehenge, or even Gettysburg. When I think of an historic vacation, I think about going home. Continue reading

Following in Sandy’s Path: $1.5 Million Awarded to PA for Recovery and Planning

February 12, 2014 / Bryan Van Sweden / 1 Comment

In the bill authorizing funds for recovery from Hurricane Sandy, Congress allocated $50 million to the National Park Service (NPS) specifically for projects related to historic properties in the affected states. The majority of these funds were directed to New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, while the rest was made available on a competitive basis to other states in the region. The Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Office submitted their request for funding to the NPS in July, and in December the Park Service announced that the Commonwealth had been selected for a $1.5 million grant, the largest amount awarded through the competitive funding process! The staff is now working to finalize the scope of the project and to move forward with the next steps. Continue reading

Improving Archaeological Reports and Review: Part 2

February 5, 2014 / Multiple Authors / 0 Comments

Archaeology is a destructive science. Generally there are no exciting explosions, or catastrophic collapses when undertaking an excavation, but all the same, once a site or portion of a site is excavated it is gone for good. Every good archaeologist is trained to take this fact into account when doing archaeological work. We sketch, note, measure, photograph, and generally record every minute detail of an excavation knowing that we are destroying the very thing we are interested in understanding. This is why there is more than a little truth in the old adage that for every day spent in the field, the archaeologist spends at least as much time, and often more, analyzing, interpreting, and reporting on the information that has been collected. Continue reading