Blog, page 4

Al Lee, one of the discussion facilitators at the Greater Philadelphia Roundtable program on “Philadelphia, the Place that Loves You Back,” provided us with this report:

If you were showing someone around Philadelphia, where would you take them? Art museums? Restaurants? Historic sites? I posed that question for group discussion during the Greater Philadelphia Roundtable Series “Philadelphia, The Place that Loves you Back.”

Everyone knows that Philadelphia is home to the iconic symbol, the Liberty Bell. But is that all we’re known for? Or is it cheesesteaks and a fictional boxer who served as the ultimate underdog? Maybe it’s none of the above and we’re really packing them in due to our unique shops and independent boutiques. Are they on your “ to do list ?”

Here is what a sample of local Philadelphians said:

“I would definitely recommend talking them to Independence Hall and Society Hill.”

“I don’t think people know how big Philadelphia really is. I would take them to the outskirts such as Chestnut Hill, Germantown and especially Longwood Gardens.

“I would take them where I would like to hang out on weekends. The Reading Terminal Market. Rittenhouse Square. Farmers Markets.  First Fridays. I love the Architectural Walking tours offered by the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia. College Campuses and whatever events are coming up on the calendar.”

“No question, I would be sure they saw all the art galleries and ethnic neighborhoods including sections of Chinatown, South Philly, and West Philly. We would go on a cultural eating tour and enjoy all the outdoor art in the process.”

From this small survey, many did not even mention seeing the Liberty Bell or having a cheesesteak. Maybe we should change the slogan to “Philadelphia, America’s best kept secret.”

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Thanks to Al and all of our volunteer discussion facilitators!  Don’t miss the next Greater Philadelphia Roundtable – the last in our current series – coming up on March 28.  For information and advance registration, visit https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/events.

Registration is now open for the final three programs in the “Phrasing Philadelphia” series of the Greater Philadelphia Roundtable.  Please join us for these discussions and contribute your suggestions for the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia:

• “City of Firsts” – Thursday, January 19, 6:30-8 p.m., at the Franklin Institute.
• “Philadelphia, the Place That Loves You Back” – Wednesday, February 22, 6:30-8 p.m., at the Independence Visitor Center.
• “City of Neighborhoods, City of Homes” – Wednesday, March 28, 6:30-8 p.m., at the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent.

For information on all programs and to register in advance, please visit https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/events.
We look forward to your participation in this unprecedented exploration of Philadelphia’s history and experience.

The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia project appears in the Works in Progress section of the Autumn 2011 issue of The American Scholar, the magazine published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.  Writer Chloe Taft calls attention to our project’s widespread public participation and to our web site as a growing gateway to the region’s digital resources.

We began the fall with a full house at the “Athens of America” roundtable at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Please join us also for the following events:

This Saturday, October 1, we are a co-sponsor for the Association of Philadelphia Tour Guides’ second annual “Great Twelve-Hour Tour” of Philadelphia. It’s a River to River, Pine to Vine, Rain or Shine event, and it’s free – join any segment or spend the day. For more information, go to:  http://www.phillyguides.org/great-tour-2011.aspx .

Registration is open now for the next two programs of the Greater Philadelphia Roundtable discussion series:

• “Workshop of the World” on Wednesday, October 19, 6:30-8 p.m., at the Tacony branch of the Free Library.

• “Corrupt and Contented” on Tuesday, November 15, 6:30-8 p.m. at Philadelphia Media Network Headquarters (the Inquirer Building, 400 N. Broad Street).

For information and advance registration – strongly advised! – go to:  https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/events

Teachers, an additional educators’ workshop will be offered on the theme of “Workshop of the World” on Tuesday, November 9, 3:30-6:30 p.m. at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. To sign up for this free workshop, go to: http://www.hsp.org/node/2311

We are so pleased by your interest and participation in creating The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. Thank you!

We’re proud to be involved in the prototype augmented-reality cell phone application for phillyhistory.org, the online database of historic photographs and maps from the City Archives, the Water Department, the Office of the City Representative, the Free Library, and the Library Company of Philadelphia, originally built by Azavea Inc. The app is available at no cost for both iPhone and Android smart phones. The Encyclopedia’s editors participated as advisers to the project and coordinated text for a group of photographs, with Doreen Skala researching and writing the text.

The Philadelphia Inquirer on Friday published a front-page feature story about Bob Skiba, who helped to form our partnership with the Association of Philadelphia Tour Guides. Bob is currently president of the Tour Guides and heads the archives at the William Way Community Center in Philadelphia. Read all about it. Congratulations also to the Tour Guides on completion of their recent certification training and examination — as a result, twenty-nine newly certified guides are prepared for the tourist season of 2011.

We’re pleased to call attention to a new documentary produced by area high school and college students under the direction of one of the Encyclopedia project’s advisers, Professor Amy Hillier at the University of Pennsylvania.  Legacy of Courage: W.E.B. DuBois and The Philadelphia Negro, was created as part of the Mapping DuBois Project.

What if you could stand in the present and see the past? It might look something like this.  Over the last several months, the Encyclopedia team has been involved in an exciting project with the City of Philadelphia Department of Records and Azavea Inc. to develop an augmented reality app for the lastest generation of smartphones.  Read all about it on Azavea’s blog, and get your phones ready for the app in the near future!

We are pleased to add the Friends of Laurel Hill Cemetery to our growing Civic Advisory Board, which helps to assure that the Encyclopedia project serves community needs.   Gwen Kaminski, Director of Development and Programs for the Friends of Laurel Hill, has helped us plan our “Green Country Town” roundtable, coming up in May at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.  The President and CEO of Laurel Hill and West Laurel Hill Cemeteries, Pete Hoskins, will be a panelist for the program.  Welcome to these supportive friends of the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia project!

The Encyclopedia editors had the opportunity to lead a roundtable discussion about the project at the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Historical Association conference, held October 14-16, 2010, at Susquehanna University.  We were pleased to see scholars from so many universities taking interest in the project and contributing their ideas and thoughtful questions.  Thanks to the historians from Penn State, Temple University, Villanova University, Philadelphia University, Millersville University, Lehigh University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere for your participation.   (That was quite a lineup of past presidents of the PHA in the back row!)  Specific topics recommendations received have been added to our nominations list on the home page of this site, and we look forward to receiving more.

We are pleased to welcome the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Encyclopedia’s Civic Advisory Board.  Staff members from the Museum’s Center for American Art participated in the Civic Partnership and Planning Workshop that launched the project, and we look forward to working with them next year on a public program to explore Philadelphia’s reputation as “Athens of America.” 

Earlier this summer, two of the Encyclopedia’s editors, Charlene Mires and Howard Gillette, participated in a meeting of the  Association of Philadelphia Tourguides.   Building on that fruitful discusison, we now welcome this organization to our growing board of civic partners.  Bob Skiba will serve as liaison between the guides and the Encyclopedia.

Looking for the latest word on Philadelphia?  We are pleased to offer a newly expanded bibliographic survey of scholarship, public history work, and public policy studies about Philadelphia published since 1982.  The survey is approximately one-third larger than the previous survey, with a significant expansion in entries related to public policy as well as updated coverage of scholarship published during 2009 and early 2010.  Our thanks to bibliographer Hillary S. Kativa for her work on the survey and to the University of Pennsylvania Press for making this project possible.

The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia is a project of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities, in cooperation with our numerous civic partners, associate editors, and advisers.  The new mailing address for the project is: The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities,  Department of History, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ  08102.