May is Historic Preservation Month! Since 2018, PA SHPO has celebrated by announcing the newest Community Initiative Award winners.
Historic Preservation Month
May is National Historic Preservation Month, with preservation organizations across the country using the opportunity to talk about the many ways historic preservation and historic places benefit our communities and our quality of life.
Governor Shapiro recently signed a proclamation declaring May 2026 as Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Month. The proclamation encourages Pennsylvanians to provide their support in furthering the preservation of the Commonwealth’s rich history and the historic places that tell their stories.
Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Month 2026 Proclamation
PA SHPO’s CIA
I realize that CIA could stand for a few different things but here in our world, it stands for the Community Initiative Awards.
PA SHPO created the Community Initiative Awards program in 2018 with the launch of the former statewide historic preservation plan, #PreservationHappensHere. They were modeled after the popularity and success of the awards given in 2016 in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act.
Since then, we’ve recognized communities of all shapes and sizes across the Commonwealth. The three 2025 awardees and their projects demonstrate the opportunities for building community through preservation.
The Lansdowne Theater Rehabilitation Project, Borough of Lansdowne, Delaware County
The Historic Lansdowne Theater Corporation (HLTC) is recognized for their community engagement to support the rehabilitation and reopening of the historic Lansdowne Theater over two decades.
New marquee lighting in action. Source: Historic Lansdowne Theater Corporation, 2025.
About the Place
Built in 1927, the Spanish Revival style Lansdowne Theater (1986RE00809) was designed by Philadelphia architect William Harold Lee for the Stanley Company of America, which was affiliated with the Warner Brothers movie studio. The single-screen movie theater boasted 1,358 seats and included a Kimball Theater Organ, one of the last installed in the Philadelphia region.
The theater served the Lansdowne community in more ways than entertainment. As the largest assembly space in the borough housed many community events like WWII bond drives, high school graduations, dance recitals and local American Legion concerts. The theater was individually listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, a year before closing in 1987. The theater’s closure was a result of new technology (i.e. VCRs and VHS tapes), deferred maintenance, and a fire in the electrical system.
Front of the Lansdowne Theater in 1927. Source: Historic Lansdowne Theater Corporation.
About the Project
The project serves as an example of the tenacity and commitment of a community to ensure that an important landmark is preserved for future use.
HLTC, formed in 2006, purchased the building, planned and implemented the theater’s rehabilitation. The group secured $20 million in funding from individuals, corporations, foundations, and local, county, state, and federal sources (including Keystone grants and historic tax credits). Having sat largely vacant for almost twenty years, the theater’s rehabilitation was a monumental task. A key part of the project’s success was the sustained and creative community engagement through social media campaigns that reinforced the theater’s connection to its community.
Lansdowne Theater after restoration. Source: Historic Lansdowne Theater Corporation.
In 2025, Lansdowne Theater reopened as a live regional music venue featuring national and international musicians. The community has celebrated and continue to embrace this unique building. For more information about the rehabilitation project, check out our December 2025 blog post.
First Cambria AME Zion Church National Register Recognition, City of Johnstown, Cambria County
The First Cambria African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church congregation are recognized for their initiatives to understand and share the church’s history with the Johnstown and Cambria County communities, as well as its role in broader efforts to recognize and interpret the area’s Black history.
First Cambria AME Zion Church, Johnstown, Cambria County.
About the Place
First Cambria AME Zion Church (1997RE01667) was established in 1873 by formerly enslaved individuals and United States Colored Troops veterans recruited to the area to work in a local tannery. The congregation, one of only two Black churches in the City of Johnstown until the 1910s, has had three different homes over their 153-year existence. The current Colonial Revival-style church was completed in 1900 in the City’s Kernville neighborhood.
First Cambria AME Church, Image Published in the Star of Zion, November 11, 1920.
Since its beginnings, the First Cambria AME Zion has played an integral role in ensuring the civil rights of Black residents living in the area, taking a leadership role in addressing issues of race, education, employment, and social unrest. The church’s rebuilding after the great Johnstown flood of 1889, its involvement in the Rosedale incident that garnered national attention, its role in the founding of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and its service to its community all tie the property to local, regional, and national events.
About the Project
In 2024, the congregation started working with Dean of Library Services and Special Projects Barbara Zaborowski at Pennsylvania Highlands Community College, who volunteered her time to document and preserve First Cambria’s legacy and historic church and parsonage. Church membership has declined significantly in recent decades, with only ten surviving members. Learning and recording the story of this important Johnstown institution was critical before more institutional history and stewardship was lost.
Barb Zaborowski/Penn Highlands Community College (left), Rev. Sharon Johnson/First Cambria AME Church (center), and Tom Chernisky/Cambria County Commissioner (right) at the National Register ceremony in June 2025.
In 2025, First Cambria was listed in the National Register of Historic Places (read the nomination here). The congregation celebrated and promoted the achievement in a public ceremony as part of their Juneteenth activities, which drew former church members and their families from across the country. This success is part of the congregation’s larger effort to preserve not only their history but the church as well. They also received a Keystone Historic Preservation Planning grant in 2025 to help increase the church’s visibility with a community century and local Black history museum.
Stewardship of Lincoln Cemetery, Borough of Penbrook, Dauphin County
Saving Our Ancestors Legacy (SOAL) is recognized for their work restoring Lincoln Cemetery (2022RE01459) through hands-on conservation work, public education efforts, partnership with community organizations and educational institutions, and exhaustive historical research.
Saving Our Ancestors Legacy (SOAL) artwork.
About the Place
Lincoln Cemetery was established in 1877 in response to the segregation, overcrowding, and poor condition of burial grounds available to Harrisburg’s African American residents. Described at its founding as a place where the dead could be “laid at rest without any discrimination” and “without distinction of color or creed,” the cemetery reflected the urgent need for a burial ground where Black Harrisburg could bury its dead with dignity. Earlier African American burial grounds in Harrisburg were closed, their graves displaced, and their dead reinterred at Lincoln Cemetery. As a result, Lincoln Cemetery became the central surviving burial landscape for generations of Black residents buried before the mid-twentieth century. The cemetery grounds included stone grave markers and memorials of all types, monuments for veterans and local leaders, and Victorian-era buildings.
Lincoln Cemetery’s main gate. Source: National Register nomination.
Over time, arson, vandalism, underfunding, altered administrative structures, and inconsistent maintenance damaged both the cemetery landscape and the records needed to understand it. Fires in 1884, 1912, and the 1930s destroyed cemetery buildings and contributed to the loss of early burial records. By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the cemetery showed the cumulative effects of decades of neglect and inappropriate maintenance. Today, there are 5,758 burials identified in Lincoln Cemetery, with the earliest marker dating to 1819 for a burial moved to the cemetery and the most recent marker for a 2018 burial.
About the Project
In 2021, Rachael Keri Williams founded Saving Our Ancestors’ Legacy (SOAL), a descendant-led grassroots nonprofit dedicated to reclaiming marginalized histories through cemetery preservation, genealogical research, public history, digital tools, and community-based stewardship. While SOAL’s hands-on restoration work began at Lincoln Cemetery in response to the severe deterioration of the cemetery, the organization’s mission reaches far beyond one site. Through Lincoln Cemetery, SOAL has developed a comprehensive preservation model that reconnects burial grounds, archival records, descendants, families, communities, and broader histories of Black migration, institution-building, military service, and survival.
Work day at Lincoln Cemetery. Source: SOAL website.
SOAL’s preservation model combines fieldwork, archival research, digital humanities, and public history. Collaborations with educational institutions, public agencies, nonprofit organizations, community groups, and preservation professionals have supported preservation planning, ground-penetrating radar, drone imaging, 3D and multispectral documentation, GIS mapping, digital cemetery documentation, and National Register nomination research.
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