Prominent landmarks in small towns hold a special type of nostalgic significance for those who have interacted with them.
Category: Historic Preservation (Page 2 of 46)
This week’s 2023 Community Initiative Award winner spotlight is on the Slate Hill Cemetery in Lower Makefield Township, Bucks County.
Lower Makefield’s Slate Hill Cemetery is an intact Colonial-era graveyard that was established in 1690 as a Quaker burial ground and was later expanded to include the township’s first public cemetery. It contains about 580 burials, including veterans of the U.S. Colored Troops who served in the Civil War. The earliest known burial dates to 1698 and the last known burial was in 1918.
Recently, the Township – which is one of Pennsylvania’s Certified Local Governments (CLG) – began an ambitious project to document, preserve, and promote the history of the cemetery. I asked some of the folks from the Historical Commission, which is spearheading the effort, to share the story with us.
This week’s 2023 Community Initiative Award winner spotlight is on the Titusville Iron Works in Titusville.
The Titusville Iron Works traces its roots to the Titusville Manufacturing Co., the first foundry and machine shop exclusively serving the oil industry, founded in 1860. Local businessmen purchased the company in 1895, renamed it the Titusville Iron Works, diversified its product line, and expanded it with new buildings and acreage.
Over the first few decades of the 20th century, the iron works evolved as owners consolidated other companies and business interests in the facility. In the early 1940s the federal government invested in new machinery and buildings for the iron works to support the war effort. By 1964 the plant was closed and the property and buildings subdivided.
Fast forward to today, and the site of this 19th century foundry is a busy event venue and preservation success story. I asked owner Bob Joyce to share the story with us.
Each week in May, to celebrate National Historic Preservation Month, we will highlight one of the 2023 Community Initiative Award winners. In this week’s post, I asked Josh Stull with the Nicholson Heritage Association about their work preserving the Nicholson Train Station.
For the past few years, PA SHPO has kicked off National Historic Preservation Month by announcing the newest Community Initiative Award winners. The four 2023 recipients and their projects showcase a variety of preservation success stories, demonstrating the importance of preserving those places at the heart of Pennsylvania’s communities that embody its past and present stories.
A few years ago, we announced a new PA SHPO program, the Historic Property Inspection Program (HPIP). We’ve talked about what HPIP is and shared our first site visit under this new program.
Several years ago, my colleagues and I at the PA SHPO compiled a history of preservation achievements in Pennsylvania. This interesting trek through the preservation timeline was published in the Winter 2016 issue of Pennsylvania Heritage magazine and was added as a chapter in the current statewide historic preservation plan, #PreservationHappensHere. This week in honor of Women’s History Month, I’m taking a deeper dive into the role of women in Pennsylvania’s preservation accomplishments.
The Pennsylvania Baseline Survey Team is thrilled to share the final year of findings from the Pennsylvania Baseline Survey. From June 2022 to March 2024, Year 3 of the Baseline Survey took place in 20 counties. To date, over 6,854 new resources have been recorded in 503 municipalities thanks to the efforts of our Baseline Survey Teams!
The Battery Philadelphia is another example of a successful historic tax credit project. This latest installment of “Historic Tax Credits @ Work” shows how a classic “white elephant” was re-energized into a unique lifestyle campus that offers space for people to live, work, stay, and gather under one roof.
Advancing Black Preservation to Sustain Black Neighborhoods with The Friends of the Tanner House
As part of Black History Month, we invited Friends of the Tanner House – which we first introduced to our readers in this post – to talk about strategies for advancing Black heritage site preservation with attention to rich community and cultural engagement. In this blog post, guest contributor Chris Rogers discuss the principles behind their in-progress community visioning and preservation planning process.
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