Pennsylvania Historic Preservation

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Category: Agriculture (Page 5 of 6)

Shippensburg Corn Festival, 1982, by Edward Sheaffer, Courtesy of Shippensburg Historical Society.

Shippensburg’s Corn Festival: Thirty-Five Years of Corn, Fun, and Historic Preservation

July 29, 2015 / / 5 Comments

By Steven Burg

Shippensburg Corn Festival, 2006. Photo by Peter Linehan, Flickr Commons, Creative Commons, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

Shippensburg Corn Festival, 2006. Photo by Peter Linehan, Flickr Commons, Creative Commons, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

On the last Saturday in August for the last three and a half decades, tens of thousands of visitors have descended on downtown Shippensburg to enjoy the crafts, music, entertainment, and food of the Shippensburg Corn Festival. Despite the continued success of the event, many people know little about its origins as a fundraiser created to protect and preserve the community’s historic buildings. Continue reading

2015: The Year of the Pennsylvania Barn

June 10, 2015 / / 6 Comments

by Curt Musselman

YearOfPAlogo

Official Year of the Pennsylvania Barn logo designed by Bob McIlhenny, 2014, using barn woodcut by Annie Rubel, 2013

Ten years ago,  Historic Gettysburg Adams County (HGAC) received a grant from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) to help establish a barn preservation program within Adams County. One of our first steps was to begin a survey of the historic barns in the county so that we would know more about the resources we were trying to save. Teams of HGAC volunteers photographed, measured and made observations about the style and construction techniques used on each barn. One of the first things that we learned was that 80 percent of the barns in Adams County are of an architectural type known as the Pennsylvania Barn. This type of barn has two distinctive characteristics; entrance to the second floor by means of a bridge or a built-up ramp, and an overhang or cantilevered forebay on the front of the barn. Within Pennsylvania, these bank barns evolved in the 18th and 19th centuries to their ultimate form, which was influenced by traditional designs brought to America by immigrants coming from Switzerland through Germany. Continue reading

From the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, this WW II newspaper photograph of students from the Horticultural School, tools in hand, showed American women on the march for victory.

It’s January – Time for the 2015 Pennsylvania Farm Show!

January 7, 2015 / / 0 Comments

UPDATE!  The PHMC booth showcasing the Historical Markers Program was selected as the Best Educational Display by the Farm Show judges! Thank you to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and the thousands of Farm Show attendees who visited the booth to learn about Pennsylvania’s rich agricultural heritage.

PHMC staff Scott Doyle, Serena Bellew, and Karen Galle pose with the Best Educational Display Award.
The BHP 2015 Farm Show booth showcasing “History on a Stick”.

Pennsylvania Farm Show Building Harrisburg

Make room on your calendars because the Pennsylvania Farm Show, the nation’s largest indoor agricultural exposition, is about to descend upon the historic Farm Show complex in Harrisburg from Saturday January 10 through Saturday January 17, 2015.  The 99th Pennsylvania Farm Show includes nearly 6,000 animals, 10,000 competitive exhibits and 300 commercial exhibits.  Continue reading

Lancaster's Central Market providing fresh food for their healthy community.

Spotlight Series: Lancaster Central Market celebrates its 125th Anniversary

October 15, 2014 / / 0 Comments

bannerFor some readers the onset of seasonal fall weather means bundling up for Friday night high school football games or starting the furnace, but I’m always reminded that another growing season is coming to a close.  However, It is not too late to find great local produce at any of Pennsylvania’s local market houses! Continue reading

Reading Terminal Market: A Proud Philadelphia Tradition Continues

June 18, 2014 / / 0 Comments

As preservationists from all over the country converge in Philadelphia  this summer for  Forum 2014 it is only appropriate to highlight the  fabulous and historic food venue that will host the conference reception on July 18th—the Reading Terminal Market.  The Market itself is a real preservation success story.  It is a landmark building (recognized as a NPS National Historic Landmark since 1976 and documented as an engineering marvel by the Historic American Engineering Record ) with its own storied history which has survived challenging and uncertain times to delight a new generation of Philadelphians and visitors.   Continue reading

Farm to City Week, November 22-28, 2013

November 13, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Farm-City Week was a national initiative begun in the 1950s to recognize the interdependence between rural and urban people, emphasizing the linked economies of agriculture and the industries that produced the machinery and products used by farmers to grow food and get it onto urban tables. Today many counties across Pennsylvania still host events observing Farm-City Week to bring attention to the mutual concerns of agricultural and urban communities. Continue reading

Pennsylvania Agricultural History Project Wins National Award

August 21, 2013 / / 0 Comments

By. Dr. Sally McMurry

The term “gray literature” well conveys the level of visibility for much work done at agencies like the Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Office.  Historic Structures Reports, National Register nominations, exhibits, and drawings may have limited long-term public exposure even though they are often  based on high-quality research and analysis.  The Vernacular Architecture Forum (VAF) has recognized that these efforts often make exemplary contributions to our understanding of the built environment, and the organization honors such work through the Paul E. Buchanan Award.  VAF spokesman Michael Chiarappa has characterized the award as a “testament to VAF’s commitment to civic engagement and the idea that broad participation in the study and understanding of vernacular landscapes provides an indispensible social good.”  We are proud to announce that the Pennsylvania Agricultural History Project is the 2013 winner.   Continue reading

Farmstead in the Oley Valley. Credit: Zachary Pyle.

Preserving the Oley Valley Rural Historic District in Pennsylvania

July 17, 2013 / / 0 Comments

by Brenda Barrett

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in the Living Landscape Observer and appears here with the permission of the author and founder of that publication, Brenda Barrett.  We appreciate Brenda’s contributions and reporting on this subject.

Oley Valley gristmill. Credit: Zachary Pyle.

Oley Valley gristmill. Credit: Zachary Pyle.

Even in a state famous for its agricultural landscapes, the Oley Valley in southeast Pennsylvania is an exceptional place. Located in a in a bowl-shaped valley flanked by the forested hills of the Reading Prong and underlain by limestone, the region is drained by two small creeks, the Manataway and the smaller Monocacy. English Quakers, French Huguenots, and Palatine farmers from Switzerland and Germany settled in the valley as early as 1725 in search of religious freedom and good farmland. They found both, producing an 18th-century pattern of farmsteads, fields, and villages that has marked the landscape ever since. Continue reading

A workshop at the community center collected information from long-time residents and engaged young residents, April 2011

The Potential of Cultural Landscapes

May 1, 2013 / / 1 Comment

Peirce Lewis, an American geographer and emeritus professor at the Pennsylvania State University, may have best described the concept of cultural landscapes; “The human landscape is our unwitting autobiography, reflecting our tastes, our values, our aspirations, and even our fears in tangible, visible form.”  Land shows both individual and collective beliefs in a physical manifestation.  Most of us can physically see what we do to our land.  However, stories associated with the “how” and the “why” we do these things are part of the cultural landscape because they support associated trends, events, and individuals.  This is important to state, and restate, because we forget about the depth of information caught-up in the unseen value system that drives the building of communities and use of resources. Continue reading

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