Blog of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office

Author: Guest Contributor (Page 3 of 15)

The Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Office occassionally asks our partners to share their news, successes, challenges, and perspectives on historic preservation matters in Pennsylvania.

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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Exploring African American Heritage in Pennsylvania’s DCNR Parks and Forests

Pennsylvania is rife in human history – if you’re in Pennsylvania, consider yourself surrounded with nearly 20,000 years of it! So, it should come as no great surprise that its 121-state park and over 2 million-acre forest system, administered by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, are steeped in both natural and human history.

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Deindustrialized Communities Market Study: What We Learned

As we wrote about in a recent blog post, the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office (PA SHPO) has been working on a huge project in our western region, aimed at identifying the challenges and opportunities for historic preservation and economic revitalization in smaller deindustrialized communities, focusing on twelve riverfront municipalities located within two regions of Southwestern Pennsylvania.

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Deindustrialized Communities Market Study

The Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office (PA SHPO) has undertaken a project to investigate the economic development and community revitalization prospects in specific southwestern Pennsylvania communities that have experienced significant de-industrialization.

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“Instruction Thorough; Situation Delightful.”

Advertisements for Tuscarora Academy continued to use this phrase more than 50 years after the school was established in 1836. Located in the quaint hamlet of Academia, Juniata County, Pennsylvania, the Tuscarora Academy was a premier 19th century secondary educational institution. Thousands of students, from 47 Pennsylvania counties, more than 30 other states, and six countries, traveled to Academia for their college preparatory courses.

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Precious Metal Preservation: the Lift

Nestled amongst the oak-covered hills of rural northwest Pennsylvania until very recently sat an iron artifact from a bygone era. Built in 1876 by the Wrought Iron Bridge Company of Canton, Ohio, this elegant, metal arch structure is what is termed, in historical bridge parlance, as a bowstring through-truss.

Originally owned and maintained by Crawford County, it has gone by numerous names over the years, including East Titusville Bridge, Pine Creek Bridge and, more recently, Messerall Road Bridge. Whatever name it goes by, it is now more commonly known for being the last of its kind in western Pennsylvania.

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