The Bishop Boyle High School is another preservation success story for Homestead, a small Pennsylvania borough on the south side of the Monongahela River between Pittsburgh and Braddock.
Researching the history of a building can feel like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle from a thrift store without the box. You might get most of the pieces to fit together so that you can tell the story of that place, but some are still missing, leaving gaps in the narrative.
If you’re anything like me, you might find those gaps frustrating, but they’re also opportunities to learn things you never could have imagined about a place.
Are you a highly skilled historic preservationist with National Register and GIS experience? The Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office (PA SHPO) is seeking an Historic Preservation Specialist to work as a National Register reviewer and triage specialist, focused on historic districts and survey.
My SHPO colleagues and I, just like the rest of the world, are continuing to emerge from our COVID cocoons. We’ve been getting out and about more each month but still find ourselves wanting to be physically connecting with places in every way we can.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is the steward of a large collection of medical facilities that reflect the evolving care for and needs of our military’s veterans. The VA’s health care system provides diverse care through approximately 170 VA medical centers and outpatient clinics across the country, serving millions of veterans each year. Pennsylvania is home to a wide range of federal facilities offering medical services for veterans.
Western Pennsylvania’s Butler Veterans Administration Hospital recently joined two other current VA hospital properties in Pennsylvania listed in the National Register of Historic Places, recognizing its important and unique role in caring for military veterans.
PA Humanities and Drexel University have launched the PA Humanities Discovery Project, an effort to map, network, and celebrate Pennsylvania’s wonderfully rich humanities landscape to build a more expansive and connected statewide community for sharing, learning, and advocacy.
The first step is to collect information from Pennsylvanians like you about what important humanities-centered work you and your organization are doing with an online survey.
Don’t wait to participate! The survey closes on December 5, 2022.
If you have been following the PA SHPO Blog, then you have probably read about the Metal Truss Bridge Management Plan (Management Plan) and the ongoing effort by PennDOT and the PA SHPO to preserve historic metal truss bridges whenever feasible. Recently, as of 2021, a new federally funded program has been created to support the rehabilitation of these bridges.
Last fall the State Museum of Pennsylvania hosted their annual workshop in archaeology entitled Hidden Stories: Uncovering African American History through Archaeology and Community Engagement. The theme was born out of the acknowledgement that African Americans are vastly underrepresented in the historic record and the representations that are present are typically unfairly biased.
Do you have a barn or agricultural outbuilding that is 50 years or older in need of repairs? Does it retain a significant degree of historic character and materials? Then the Historic Barn and Farm Foundation of Pennsylvania (HBFF) has a grant opportunity for you!
This year marks the inauguration of HBFF’s matching grant program to encourage the maintenance and repair of historic barns and outbuildings throughout Pennsylvania as one way to promote and support the preservation of Pennsylvania’s rural heritage.