June 23rd, 2010
By The Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Wednesday, June 30 at 6 PM
Panel Discussion and Show-and-Tell
Come early at 5:30 PM for a screening of a new documentary about Bishop Richard Allen
This year marks the 250th birthday of Bishop Richard Allen, a revered figure in African American history and one of the nation’s leading abolitionists. Though enslaved at birth, he eventually purchased his own freedom, started several businesses, and created one of the first independent black churches in America — Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, now known as “Mother” Bethel AME. Allen was also the first African American figure to eulogize a president, the first black author (with Absalom Jones) to hold a federal copyright, and the first African American bishop in the United States.
Join the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Library Company of Philadelphia for a celebration of Allen’s life and legacy. Pastors from Mother Bethel AME Church, Historic St. George’s United Methodist Church, and Mother African Zoar United Methodist Church, and a historian from the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas will participate in a panel discussion, along with history professor Richard Newman, author of Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers. The moderator will be University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler, who specializes in African American religious history. Learn about Richard Allen’s many contributions to American religion, society, and culture. At the event, guests can view original documents from HSP and LCP that relate to Richard Allen. Some of these documents have also been posted as an online exhibition.
To register for this free event click here.
The panel discussion will be preceded by a showing of an exciting new documentary about the life of one of America’s unsung founding fathers, Apostle of Freedom: Bishop Richard Allen. Primarily utilizing Bishop Allen’s own voice found in his autobiography, the story is well supported by a cast of scholarly experts, church officials, and Allen descendants. This short film, produced by History Making Productions and funded by the Lomax Family Foundation and Mother Bethel AME Church, will leave viewers wanting to know more about Bishop Richard Allen and the events surrounding his exceptional life.
June 15th, 2010
By Ian Charlton
El Centro students document the neighborhood. Images from the Kensington Art of History blog.
This past Friday I spent the afternoon at Norris Square Presbyterian Church for the Kensington Art of History Project. There, students from El Centro de Estudiantes, a school started in 2009 by the non-profit Big Picture Philadelphia in association with Congreso de Latinos Unidos, presented their findings on the history of Kensington and Norris Square neighborhoods in an exhibition called “Threads of History: A Living Museum of Kensington’s Past and Present.” The multimedia presentation, which included photos, texts, old maps of the neighborhood, and most notably, performances by the students, was informative and entertaining. Most impressive was the depth of research done by the high-school students and the engaging way they presented the material. The project was devoted to relating the experience of past immigrants of Kensington and the problems they dealt with — like the necessity of child labor — to the experience of recent immigrants to Kensington today and the struggles they face. I really enjoyed the humorous interaction performed by two students, playing John B. Stetson and one of his employees, in which the employee begrudgingly accepts a meager amount of cash offered by Stetson out of his own deep pockets. Visit the Kensington Art of History project’s blog for more about the students’ research, including photos and video. Read more about Big Picture Learning’s project-based schools here, here, and at the Philadelphia Public School Notebook blog.
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May 17th, 2010
By Ian Charlton
Slinky inventor Richard James and son Thomas, play with Slinkys on the stairs of the James family home in Philadelphia in 1945. Courtesy of the Independence Seaport Museum.
Last week I was researching Cramp’s shipyard in Fishtown so that I could add this site to the PhilaPlace map. Cramp’s shipyard was a fixture on the docks of Fishtown from 1830 until the end of World War II (with the exception of a twelve-year stretch during the Great Depression when it fell into disrepair). It had developed a reputation for producing not only commercial ships but also “men of war” starting in the Mexican War and continuing through World War II. Cramp’s good reputation was international– it produced ships for the Imperial Russian Navy as well as the Ottomans. Benefitting from lucrative naval contracts, during World War I Cramp’s employed 11,000 workers. During World War II, the number shot up to 18,000. Cramp’s was a major player in the shift from wooden clipper ships to steam-driven ships of iron and finally steel ships.
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May 4th, 2010
By Elaine Ellison
Top: View of North Marshall Street, looking north from Poplar Street; Bottom: Pushcarts mural on 900 block of N. Marshall Street, between Poplar and Girard
What’s in a name?? Today, my old neighborhood is considered a part of Northern Liberties, but when I lived on the 900 block of North Marshall Street, the boundary of Northern Liberties was from Front and Girard west to 6th Street and south to Spring Garden Street. We never knew what our area was called. North Central Philadelphia was an easy answer. In doing research at the Library Company of Philadelphia, I found a map that listed a small area from 6th Street to Broad as Penn’s Land. Did that make it different from Penn’s Woods which is the meaning of Pennsylvania?
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Tags: commercial districts, Elaine Ellison, gentrification, Girard Avenue, Marshall Street, neighborhood designations, Northern Liberties, Poplar Street, real estate development, redevelopment
Posted in Home Posts, Press Releases
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April 19th, 2010
By Ian Charlton
Aerial view of Stetson Hat manufacturing complex, circa 1940. Photograph of painting.
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April 9th, 2010
By Melissa Mandell
Neighborhood around Schmidt’s Brewery, 1963. Courtesy Temple University Urban Archives
Whether you consider it a renaissance or rank gentrification, something to celebrate or to lament, or an uneasy, ambivalent mix of both, everyone in Philadelphia seems to have an opinion about the radical changes Northern Liberties has undergone in the last twenty years. PhilaPlace offers some personal perspectives on Northern Liberties, then and now.
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Tags: adaptive re-use, Agnes Hatcher, Garden Looms, gentrification, industry, Jennifer Baker, Kaplan's Bakery, Liberty Lands park, Northern Liberties, Ortlieb's Brewery, real estate development
Posted in Home Posts
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March 29th, 2010
By Melissa Mandell
PhilaPlace.org has just launched some exciting new features on its map page! Visitors can click on the new “Streets” tab and view enhanced historical maps that reveal in-depth patterns of change over time for specific blocks in South Philadelphia and Northern Liberties neighborhoods. Land-use and census data recreate details and activities on a street, house by house, business by business, for South 4th Street’s “Fabric Row;” the South 9th Street market; the neighborhoods destroyed by the construction of Interstate 95; and the historically African American settlement on Wallace Street in Northern Liberties once known as Paschall’s Alley.
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March 19th, 2010
By Melissa Mandell
Last week, (my personal) über-cityblog Philebrity.com came up with the most brilliant idea ever (albeit borrowed from the blog Londonist) and entreated its readers to submit their very own hand-drawn maps of their neighborhoods. Why, oh why didn’t I think of that? …it’s probably just as well since Philebrity gets a lot more traffic than the PhilaPlace blog anyway. The resulting entries – ranging in style from cheekily “Maira Kalman-esque” to back-of-the-cocktail napkin crude — are, I think, very Philadelphian: often hilarious, totally subjective, probably offensive, painfully forthright, practical, sentimental, contradictory, and self-conscious.
Just check out these maps depicting the many conflicting and overlapping identities of our very storied and often contested neighborhoods north of Center City: two versions of Northern Liberties (so far); West Kensington; “Secret” Fishtown (Shadtown?); and Norris Square/”Olde” Kensington…”dark and gloomy” borders, “poverty,” and “one-stop gentrification”…mini-restaurant reviews, social commentary, and snarky in-jokes… it’s all here in these maps. Be sure to brave the resulting comments, too.
Visit Philebrity to see the rest, including Wash West, Old City, Pennsport, East Passyunk Avenue, Queen Village, and the ever-mysterious Eraserhood, courtesy of bhiladelphia :
Keep ‘em coming, Philebrity readers…Hand-drawn Philadelphia could very well become its own blog if we can continue to map the entire city and argue about it, too.
March 8th, 2010
By Amy Jane Cohen
My most memorable project in high school was one in which I researched my own house. I remember how thrilling it was to find my house on old maps at the Historical Society, to see my street address in City Directories, to trace the deeds of my house at City Hall, and to find census data at the Free Library. By finding out about my house, I also learned about the history of my neighborhood and of the city of Philadelphia. Indeed, when I think about why I decided to major in history at college and to become a teacher of history, I know that completing that project was a pivotal event.
As a 21st -century teacher of social studies, I wanted to give my students the opportunity to experience a similar hands-on and highly relevant research process. I also recognized, however, that today’s students have a range of presentation tools available which were unimaginable when I was in high school. I share with my students my prized project, painstakingly put together with construction paper, handwritten pages, and even crayon. They (and I) find it hard to believe that in 1981, this constituted an “A” project:
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February 26th, 2010
By The Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Thursday, March 4, 6:30pm
A Tribute to a Tree of Peace
Lecture and Dance Performance
FREE
Legend holds that in 1682 William Penn and Lenape Chief Tamanend made a treaty beneath a large elm tree along the Delaware River. The tree, in what is now Penn Treaty Park, was uprooted during a storm in March 1810. On the 200th anniversary of the felling of the tree, join HSP and the Penn Treaty Museum as we commemorate the signing of the treaty, long a symbol of religious and civil liberty. Guests will enjoy singing, dancing, and drumming from Native Americans from the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation and a lecture by Dr. Gregory Schaaf, director of the Center for Indigenous Arts & Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Followed by a reception and a display of historic documents and artifacts. To learn more about the Penn Treaty, visit www.penntreatymuseum.org. Register Now!
Wed
nesday, March 10, 4:30–6:30 pm
PhilaPlace Teacher Workshop: Mapping Our History
FREE
Teachers must register in advance
Mapping projects allow students to connect with local history as they gather, analyze, and interpret information about their neighborhood. This PhilaPlace workshop will suggest approaches for developing local history mapping lessons and discuss ways to incorporate immigration and oral history into such projects. Learn more about resources for teachers on PhilaPlace.org. Attendance qualifies for two hours of Act 48 credit. Register now!
