Blog of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office
The Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Office occassionally asks our partners to share their news, successes, challenges, and perspectives on historic preservation matters in Pennsylvania.
The main character of our story, the Messerall Road Bridge, began its life over Pine Creek near East Titusville in 1876, carrying traffic associated with the local oil and lumber industries. The bridge served as a crossing over Pine Creek nearly 140 years before it was closed to vehicular traffic in 1987.
In an effort to preserve one of Pennsylvania’s historic homes, the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) is marketing for sale, removal, and preservation a two-and-a-half-story, 3 bedroom, one bath, Shingle-Style house with many beautiful original features including wooden floors, trim work, railings, plastered walls, windows, doors, fixtures, and wood shingle detailing on the exterior.
Interested?
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The Pennsylvania Baseline Survey Team is excited to share another year of findings! Between January 2022 to October 2022, our five Year 2 Baseline Survey teams surveyed in 18 counties and recorded 6,663 new resources in 396 municipalities. Quite an impressive number!
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If you have been following the PA SHPO Blog, then you have probably read about the Metal Truss Bridge Management Plan (Management Plan) and the ongoing effort by PennDOT and the PA SHPO to preserve historic metal truss bridges whenever feasible. Recently, as of 2021, a new federally funded program has been created to support the rehabilitation of these bridges.
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October is Archaeology Month! Today’s post by Guest Contributor PennDOT archaeologist Steve McDougal covers using a non-traditional method for field tests: the Paleo-Digger.
Every archaeological survey poses different conditions and challenges. For PennDOT’s SR 22/322 safety improvement project in Northern Dauphin County, one of the big challenges is the depth of soils involved. Past excavation in the 1990s for this area showed us that the soil column with archaeological potential could extend 3.5 to 4.5 meters (11.5 to 14.75 feet) in depth below current ground surface.
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September is International Underground Railroad Month. September was chosen because it is the month that two of the most well-known people associated with the Underground Railroad – Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass – escaped from slavery. Today’s post was written by guest author Dr. Leroy Hopkins and he provides a glimpse into the Underground Railroad in Columbia, Pennsylvania.
Continue readingToday’s post in one of our Spotlight Series, which showcases places, projects, and people engaged in different kinds of historic preservation activities in Pennsylvania.
How many times have you walked past a building in your neighborhood and thought, “Gee, I wonder what that looks like inside?”
Continue readingAs my internship with Pennsylvania’s Historic Preservation Office comes to a close, I want to take the time to reflect on my experiences here. When I began in early June, I was relatively new to the field of historic preservation.
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My name is Sarah Hoffeditz, and I spent the first half of this summer gaining unique experiences through my internship at the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office in Harrisburg, PA.
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Few buildings are more iconic to downtown Erie than the historic Warner Theatre. At 91-years-old, the luxury movie palace still offers an environment “twice as rich, three times more fanciful than life.”
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