The craft (or art?) of becoming Presidential was invented Philadelphia. But who actually set the tone in the first President’s House? That would be Philadelphia’s most prominent enslaved African, George and Martha’s Hercules.
One of nine enslaved Africans owned by George and Martha Washington, Hercules headed up the kitchen at the Presidential Mansion at [...]
On February 28, 1967 The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 3-2 decision, reversed a September 2, 1966 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Joseph S. Lord, 3d, that Girard College must admit African American pupils under the Pennsylvania Public Accommodations Act. The first African American students were admitted in 1968.
On February 28, [...]
We hear the museum at Valley Forge is on again. Now the campaign goal is $150 million - up from $100 million since we first learned of the proposal in 2002. The increase is due to the sensible addition of an endowment, as well as land acquisition costs. This last change may also be a [...]
A few days ago, the American Institute of Architects published a list of “America’s Favorite Architecture.” The Philadelphia buildings on the list may be America’s favorites, but are they Philadelphia’s?
Can we even take seriously a list on which five, a slim percentage of the total 150, are homegrown?
No local edifice cracks the top 20, although Philadelphia’s [...]
142 years ago: Disaster struck on the morning of February 8, 1865, at 9th Street and Washington Avenue. Fire at a coal-oil yard in what is now the heart of Philadelphia’s Italian Market spread, fuelled by 1,500 barrels in storage. Ice dams turned adjacent snow-packed yards and streets into a sea of fire that killed [...]
When it comes to the first of February, Philadelphia has never been able to claim much good fortune, or reasonable judgement:
2007 - The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts sells a whole Eakins, The Cello Player, to help pay for its half of The Gross Clinic. The 1896 portrait of Philadelphia musician Ruldoph Hennig, acquired [...]
Yes, scrapple is more than a culinary cul-de-sac. It’s a down-home metaphor that will never, ever, be known as Philadelphia Pate. Scrapple’s pure to this place, and visa-versa. It’s the real thing, the honest thing. No Philadelphia food is older and none so distinctive, in a haggis kind of way. Someone once claimed that the [...]
Come July 4th, Americans will again celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence as the nation’s birthday.
But declaration is one thing; realization is quite another. And on July 4, 1776, realization was still one long, hard-fought war away.
When did the rest of the world actually recognize the United States of America as a free and [...]
We’ve been thinking about the renewed interest in David Goodis, Philadelphia’s long-buried, hard-boiled crime novelist.
He died at the age of 49 in 1967, and had been called the “poet of the losers.” Goodis’ pulp fiction explains why. It is drawn from, inspired by, Philadelphia’s Depression-era streets: gritty, lonely, and on the edge.
But the “poet of the losers” was [...]
What’s Philadelphia without an almanac? Ask folks about this classic communications conveyance and they’ll probably tell you about Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac, now 275 years since the first issue. And there were so many more, before and after. Few folks, if any, can speak of Samuel Atkins’ Kalandarium Pennsilvaniense of 1685, the first of its [...]
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