Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
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Penn\u27s Great Expansion: Postwar Urban Renewal and the Alliance between Private Universities and the Public Sector
No full textWith the adoption of the 1948 plan, Penn embarked on the largest expansion in its history. The Great Expansion—a term we use to distinguish this extended period of prodigious institutional growth and improvement from Penn’s first expansion in West Philadelphia at the turn of the twentieth century—was the beneficiary of urban renewal politics and policies in the 1950s and 1960s. Philadelphia’s reformist, pro-growth Democratic leaders and city planners enthusiastically supported Penn’s expansion in West Philadelphia, hailing it as a bulwark against blight and an engine of economic and technological development at a time when Philadelphia’s manufacturing industries had begun a precipitous decline. Philadelphia, like New York and Chicago, looked to its universities to play key roles in the city’s urban renewal plans, and these universities— Penn, Drexel, and Temple—enlisted the city’s help to achieve their expansionist goals. By 1970, the redevelopment properties owned or controlled by Penn made up the lion’s share of land targeted by the Redevelopment Authority of Philadelphia (RDA) for urban renewal in an eighty-block area of West Philadelphia. Penn was by far the dominant urban renewal university in Philadelphia. In fact, it was the nation’s bellwether for this approach; no other higher education institution in the era of federally funded urban renewal (1949–74) made more use of urban renewal instruments or achieved a greater expansion in this period than Penn
From Philadelphia to the Pinelands: The New Jersey Photographs of Lewis W. Hine
Get PDFA wide variety of studies have functioned to make Progressive-era photographer Lewis W. Hine a recognizable household name. Despite the proliferation of these monographs, photo books, scholarly articles, and museum exhibitions, a large number of the artist’s region-specific photographs still remain untouched by historical research. By locating and exploring Hine’s photographic documentation of certain places, historians are beginning to unearth previously unknown aspects of state and local history, gaining a better understanding of the larger social, political, and cultural climate of specific locations at particular points in time. This photographic essay uses selections from Hine’s 1910 photographs documenting child labor on the cranberry bogs of New Jersey in order to introduce the reader to an underdocumented aspect of Garden State history and its connection to the Italian immigrant enclaves of nearby Philadelphia. In depicting the work of Italian laborers from Philadelphia who traveled to the New Jersey Pinelands for work, Hine’s photographs draw attention to the ongoing issue of migrant labor—an important element of the history of the mid-Atlantic region. These images also add another dimension to the larger labor history of Italian immigrants in Philadelphia, one that has yet to be fully explored by historians of the Italian American experience
"Faithfully Drawn from Real Life": Autobiographical elements in Frank J. Webb\u27s The Garies and Their Friends
Get PDFA resurgence of interest in Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends—the second novel by an African American and the first to portray northern racism—underscores the need for consideration of recently discovered biographical information about this enigmatic author. Previously unknown details about the lives of Frank J. Webb (1828–94) and his family and friends parallel some of his literary portrayals, subtly inform other scenes and characters, and generally help to illuminate the unique combination of biography, social history, and creative imagination that constitute Webb’s complex literary achievement
Lucretia Mott\u27s Heresy: Abolition and Women\u27s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. By CAROL FAULKNER.
No full textAnnouncements
No full textThe Paul A. Stellhorn Undergraduate New Jersey History AwardCall for Papers: PMHB and Pennsylvania History Special Issue: Teaching Pennsylvania History (fall 2014
The Kittanning Destroyed Medal
Get PDFOn May 1, 2006, western Pennsylvania began the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Seven Years\u27 War with an exhibit entitled Clash of Empires: The British, French, and Indian War, 1754–1763, the largest known exhibition on the conflict, at the Senator John Heinz Regional History Center in Pittsburgh. Nestled among the nearly three hundred rare artifacts and paintings was the "Kittanning Destroyed Medal," the first documented medal engraved and struck for military honor in British North America. Originally struck in silver by order of the Corporation of the City of Philadelphia, it was presented by Mayor Attwood Shute to Colonel John Armstrong, who led the Second Battalion of the Pennsylvania Regiment against the Indian village of Kittanning on September 8, 1756, in retaliation for the raiding and burning of Fort Granville approximately a month before. The front of the medal displays the battle at Kittanning; it shows a military officer followed by two sol-diers, with an Indian prostrate on the ground before them. In the back-ground, the Indian village is burning. The reverse side portrays the Philadelphia Corporation\u27s coat of arms. Although this original medal is one of the rarest American treasures, it is easy to find in the historical literature—it is invariably mentioned as a fitting commemoration of Armstrong\u27s raid. Despite its historical significance and value, however, there has been no attempt to document the medal\u27s history or explain its meaning
Joseph Priestley House
Get PDFOn a hillside in Northumberland, a white Federal-style mansion with symmetrical wings perches a quarter mile above the Susquehanna River. Crowned with a diamond-patterned balustrade on its slate roof, the house boasts a commanding view of the river\u27s north branch. Before the canal and the railroad cut across the expansive lawn, travelers arriving at the riverfront reached the house by following a semicircular carriage drive that echoed the arched fanlight above the pedimented entrance. Sparsely ornamented with a frieze board of triglyphs and a Palladian window centered on the second story of the façade fronting the street, the five-bay residence was the eighteenth-century American version of an English gentleman\u27s country house. In this case, the English gentleman was the famous—some would say notorious—Joseph Priestley: pioneering chemist, political philosopher, and dissenting theologian
