Blog of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office
Car barns are a historic remnant of a bygone era. The Johnstown Car Barns, located at 630 and 716 Central Avenue in Johnstown are no exception. Built in 1893 to service and store trolleys, these building help communicate the story of public transportation in Cambria County. The historic car barns are being offered for sale, allowing for a unique opportunity to adaptively reuse the buildings so they can be retained as an important landmark in the community.
I don’t want this month’s Shout Outs to get lost in the holiday shuffle of office parties, vacation days, and last-minute lunch-hour shopping trips so I’m bringing it to you a week early. Consider it an early present from your favorite SHPO!
Have you ever driven along the back roads of Pennsylvania and come across one of the state’s beautiful metal truss bridges? Or seen a massive truss bridge spanning a major river crossing? These awe-inspiring bridges are a part of Pennsylvania’s landscape and an important part of the state’s engineering and technological history. Continue reading
A long, long time ago (okay it was only 2014, but still…) I wrote about local preservation in Pennsylvania and at the end of that article I promised a follow up with some additional insights. Time passed and lots of other interesting projects and places were more worthy of being featured on this blog. But, a promise made is a promise kept, so here’s the second installment of the “3 things to know” series. This time we’ll focus on one of the more commonly confusing issues in preservation – the differences between the National Register of Historic Places and local historic designation. Continue reading
It’s that time again!
As some of you may know, the National Park Service highlighted Pennsylvania in their #50for50 social media campaign earlier this month. This initiative is part of their broader effort to celebrate and recognize the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act this year. Each week, NPS has been promoting the interesting, meaningful, and successful historic preservation work being done in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. (FYI, this week is South Carolina’s turn!)
Here at PHMC, we participated by adding the #50for50 and #Preservation50 hashtags to all of the preservation-related posts on the Pennsylvania Trails of History Facebook page and @PHMC Twitter feed. I think NPS could have featured Pennsylvania’s successes for a year and still not have gotten through them all, but alas, we need to share the limelight. So, I thought it would be a great idea to share with you some of the stories that didn’t get aired that week and that we haven’t covered in previous posts and Shout-Outs.
Fostering a public appreciation for historic resources and archaeology is one of the most important keys to protecting our history.
Unfortunately, many cultural resources professionals struggle with how to make their work accessible and interesting to the general public. In this blog post, we take on this challenge and announce the launch of a non-scientific, but very intriguing experiment to explore how the public responds to different avenues of communication – brochures, social media and web tools. Continue reading
As part of our Preservation50 activities during this milestone year, we’d like to share some stories we think showcase the people and projects that celebrate, protect, and promote important pieces of Pennsylvania’s heritage. The first story we want to share is about the Carver Court neighborhood in Caln Township, Chester County, just on the edge of Coatesville. This week’s blog post celebrates the recent efforts made by Carver Court’s community members, a group made up of current and former residents, government officials and entities, historians, and more. The happy outcome for this story is the listing of Carver Court in the National Register of Historic Places on May 31, 2016. Continue reading
June… school’s out, summer officially arrives, vacations galore, and lots of great preservation work going on. I myself just got back from a nice long weekend in the PA Wilds, and they deserve a Shout Out for the amazing work they’re doing to promote the natural and historical wonders of this region. I didn’t want to come home from the quaint cottage we stayed in along Pine Creek but I knew you’d all be waiting for this month’s Shout Out and I didn’t want to disappoint. Continue reading
Western Pennsylvania has been a hotbed of National Register activity during the past year. From three Washington County farms, to an industrial facility and a Salvation Army building in Pittsburgh, to a Masonic lodge in Latrobe and a synagogue in Brownsville, the National Park Service has recently listed an eclectic variety of properties in that part of the state.
by Emily Paulus Everett, AECOM Technical Services
On November 6, 2015, the City of Philadelphia became the first United States city to join the Organization of World Heritage Cities – a prestigious designation that recognizes, among other things, its vast and significant collection of well-preserved historic resources. That same week, representatives from the PA SHPO, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management, and AECOM Technical Services, Inc. gathered in Center City, Philadelphia to kick off Phase 1 of a two-phase effort to protect those historic resources before, during, and in the aftermath of, future flooding events. As part of the PA SHPO’s Disaster Planning for Historic Properties Initiative, Philadelphia County joins Monroe, Bedford, and Cameron as one of four pilot counties to take into account the impact of future flooding events on historic properties. Continue reading
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