This past June Barbara Frederick and I were in Saltsburg, Indiana County attending a stakeholder meeting for the Loyahanna and Conemaugh Dam’s master planning process. The Army Corps of Engineers, Pittsburgh District has been hard at work this summer updating their planning documents, and, as the Western Region Section 106 review team, Barbara and I have been doing our part to provide our support to their process. We also used the opportunity to get a first-hand look at the Dams, Saltsburg, and some really great historic resources! Continue reading
Category: Community Character (Page 16 of 19)
Bungalow in State College, Centre County. Photo by Bryan Van Sweden, PHMC.
Who doesn’t love a Bungalow? This charming cottage-like dwelling was America’s favorite small house at the turn of the 20th century and was most popular between 1900 and 1930. Some view Bungalows as the embodiment of “home” — intentionally designed as a cozy and welcoming house form with a prominent front porch and chimney. It was even romanticized in songs of that period by Irving Berlin and others. In his 1925 lyrics Berlin described “A little bungalow, an hour or so from anywhere. A little cozy nest, the kind that’s best for two. Among the shady trees, with birds and bees and lots of air.” No wonder the popularity of Bungalows spread quickly across the country. What exactly is a Bungalow house and where did the design come from? Continue reading
Shippensburg’s Corn Festival: Thirty-Five Years of Corn, Fun, and Historic Preservation
By Steven Burg
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
by Curt Musselman
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
UPDATE: Local Landmarks For Sale
In our June 2013 post, we featured the upcoming sale of National Register listed state armories located in historic communities throughout the Commonwealth. To date, eight of the armories marketed for adaptive reuse by the Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs have been sold to buyers who have agreed to purchase the buildings with a historic preservation covenant. The covenants will help to ensure future improvements to the buildings will be carried out in accordance with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and Guidelines for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings. Continue reading
The monumental 7th Street Gate to the Easton Cemetery. Photo by Jeremy Young, October 2014.
High on a hill overlooking the City of Easton is the serene, picturesque, and endlessly fascinating Easton Cemetery. The cemetery occupies a point of land created by a bend in the Bushkill Creek that, at the time of the cemetery’s establishment in 1849, was on the edge of a rapidly growing industrial community in desperate need of both parkland and sanitary burial options. The historic core of the burial ground, 48 acres assembled in two parcels during the 19th century, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1990 for its significance in landscape architecture and art. Continue reading
By Jill Hall and Karen Marshall
Brinton 1704 House and the surrounding lands were the location of core combat actions in the final phase of the Battle, Chadds Ford, Delaware County
On September 11, 1777, British General William Howe and his professional army engaged General George Washington and his citizen soldiers along the banks of the Brandywine River about 30 miles southwest of Philadelphia. Part of a larger strategy known as the Philadelphia Campaign, the Battle of Brandywine was one of the earliest and largest battles of the American Revolution, encompassing some 30,000 British and American soldiers. The Battle lasted from sunup to sundown, instantly changing the character of a quiet farming community that consisted predominately of Quakers. Although the Battle of Brandywine was a loss for the Americans, they proved that they had the resiliency to withstand the British, increasing French support of the American cause. Continue reading
Making the Grade: The Architecture of Philadelphia’s Public Schools, Part 1
The architectural historian in me is fascinated by the threads of science, theory, and symbolism that go into designing and building schools. Like most preservationists, I am a strong believer that the power of place plays a central role in shaping our experiences, attitudes, and values. The tangible aspects of a school’s ‘power of place’ include its architectural style, materials, dimensions, and floor plan. Taken together, these character-defining features often reflect a community’s wealth, prominence, and aspirations for their children. In Philadelphia, schools from the mid-19th century to pre-World War II period fit into this category, regardless of their location in large or small, rich or poor neighborhoods. After World War II, the character of many of Philadelphia’s public schools shifted, and the school buildings communicate a rigid, institutional personality that is markedly different from the schools only a few decades older. Continue reading
Preservation in a Changing Economic Climate
Many of Pennsylvania’s communities face the challenging task of adapting to a vastly different economic climate than the one that led to their historic growth and development. This new economic reality of dramatically reduced population, deindustrialization and loss of tax base has resulted in historic downtowns and residential neighborhoods pockmarked by disinvestment and vacant properties. Abandoned, demolished or marginally repurposed historic churches, schools and factories are especially vivid reminders of changing times and the large social and economic forces at work. Continue reading
School Daze
No, this isn’t a review of Spike Lee’s 1988 movie. I’m referring to my state of mind when I think about all of the work I’ve done with public schools in Philadelphia over the past few months.
As you may remember from this post, I joined BHP in July and my first assignment was to complete the survey component of a larger project to document Philadelphia elementary and secondary public schools of all types, styles, and dates. I had a good start on the survey work thanks to the headway my predecessor made in 2013 by assembling lists and survey maps, which are organized by zip code. My school daze started when I realized that there were about 300 public schools that qualified for this reconnaissance-level survey. And, even more intimidating, that 205 still needed to be surveyed before school started on September 8th! Continue reading
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