National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal government's official list of districts, buildings and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance. A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred preserving the property; the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 established the National Register and the process for adding properties to it. Of the more than one million properties on the National Register, 80,000 are listed individually; the remainder are contributing resources within historic districts. For most of its history the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service, an agency within the United States Department of the Interior, its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, coordinate and protect historic sites in the United States.
While National Register listings are symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties. Protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places; the application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. Historic sites outside the country proper, but associated with the United States are listed. Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts, multiple property submissions; the Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties: district, structure, building, or object. National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties; some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service.
These include National Historic Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Military Parks, National Memorials, some National Monuments. On October 15, 1966, the Historic Preservation Act created the National Register of Historic Places and the corresponding State Historic Preservation Offices; the National Register consisted of the National Historic Landmarks designated before the Register's creation, as well as any other historic sites in the National Park system. Approval of the act, amended in 1980 and 1992, represented the first time the United States had a broad-based historic preservation policy; the 1966 act required those agencies to work in conjunction with the SHPO and an independent federal agency, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, to confront adverse effects of federal activities on historic preservation. To administer the newly created National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service of the U. S. Department of the Interior, with director George B.
Hartzog Jr. established an administrative division named the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Hartzog charged OAHP with creating the National Register program mandated by the 1966 law. Ernest Connally was the Office's first director. Within OAHP new divisions were created to deal with the National Register; the division administered several existing programs, including the Historic Sites Survey and the Historic American Buildings Survey, as well as the new National Register and Historic Preservation Fund. The first official Keeper of the Register was an architectural historian. During the Register's earliest years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPOs were small and underfunded. However, funds were still being supplied for the Historic Preservation Fund to provide matching grants-in-aid to listed property owners, first for house museums and institutional buildings, but for commercial structures as well. A few years in 1979, the NPS history programs affiliated with both the U.
S. National Parks system and the National Register were categorized formally into two "Assistant Directorates." Established were the Assistant Directorate for Archeology and Historic Preservation and the Assistant Directorate for Park Historic Preservation. From 1978 until 1981, the main agency for the National Register was the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the United States Department of the Interior. In February 1983, the two assistant directorates were merged to promote efficiency and recognize the interdependency of their programs. Jerry L. Rogers was selected to direct this newly merged associate directorate, he was described as a skilled administrator, sensitive to the need for the NPS to work with SHPOs, local governments. Although not described in detail in the 1966 act, SHPOs became integral to the process of listing properties on the National Register; the 1980 amendments of the 1966 law further defined the responsibilities of SHPOs concerning the National Register.
Several 1992 amendments of the NHPA added a category to the National Register, known as Traditional Cultural Properties: those properties associated with Native American or Hawaiian groups
Fairmount Park
Fairmount Park is the largest municipal park in Philadelphia and the historic name for a group of parks located throughout the city. Fairmount Park consists of two park sections named East Park and West Park, divided by the Schuylkill River, with the two sections together totalling 2,052 acres. Management of Fairmount Park and the entire citywide park system is overseen by Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, a city department created in 2010 from the merger of the Fairmount Park Commission and the Department of Recreation. Many other city parks had been included in the Fairmount Park system prior to 2010, including Wissahickon Valley Park in Northwest Philadelphia, Pennypack Park in Northeast Philadelphia, Cobbs Creek Park in West Philadelphia, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park in South Philadelphia and 58 additional parks, plazas and public golf courses spread throughout the city. Since the 2010 merger, the term "Fairmount Park system" is no longer used by the Parks & Recreation department, the adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park and all other park areas are considered separate entities.
Fairmount Park, Philadelphia's first park, occupies 2,052 acres adjacent to the banks of the Schuylkill River. Since 2010, Philadelphia Parks & Recreation divides the original park into East and West Fairmount parks; the original domain of Fairmount Park consisted of three areas: "South Park" or the South Garden below the Fairmount Water Works extending to the Callowhill Street Bridge. The South Garden predated the establishment of the Park Commission in 1867, while Lemon Hill and Sedgeley were added in 1855–56. After the Civil War, work progressed on laying out West Park. In the 1870s, the Fairmount Park Commission expropriated properties along the Wissahickon Creek to extend Fairmount Park; the Schuylkill River Trail is a modern paved multi-use trail by Kelly Drive in the East Park. The Belmont Plateau Cross Country Course is located in the park; the 1923 and 1976 USA Cross Country Championships were held in the park. The park grew out of the Lemon Hill estate of Henry Pratt, whose land was owned by Robert Morris, signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Purchased by the city in 1844, the estate was dedicated to the public by city council's ordinance on September 15, 1855. A series of state and local legislative acts over the next three years increased the holdings of the city. In 1858, the city held a design competition to re-landscape Lemon Hill and Sedgeley for public use as the best way to better protect the city's water supply; as the site of the 1876 Centennial Exposition and the first zoo in the United States, the Philadelphia Zoo, Fairmount Park was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 7, 1972. The adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park, located to the immediate northwest, was included in the Fairmount Park NRHP registration document. Park properties include the Centennial Arboretum, a Horticulture Center, Fairmount Water Works, Memorial Hall, Shofuso Japanese House and Garden, Boathouse Row, Smith Memorial Playground and Playhouse, recreation centers, reservoirs and other pieces of art. Fairmount Park is home to a large collection of public art due to the efforts of the Association for Public Art, a non-profit organization founded in 1872 to embellish Fairmount Park with outdoor sculpture, including the Florentine Lions installed in 1887.
The Art Association continues to commission and care for a large number of sculptures, in coordination with the park and city. In 2007, the Art Association installed Iroquois by Mark di Suvero near the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Mount Pleasant, built in 1762–65 for a Scottish ship captain named John Macpherson, is administered by the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Art Museum administers Cedar Grove Mansion, a house built in 1748–50 in what became the Frankford neighborhood of the city. Cedar Grove was relocated to the park in 1926–1928. Other historic houses in the park, listed by year of construction, include Boelson Cottage, The Lilacs, Letitia Street House, Ridgeland Mansion, Belmont Mansion, The Cliffs, Woodford Mansion, Hatfield House, Randolph House, Strawberry Mansion, The Solitude, Sweetbriar Mansion, Ormiston Mansion, Lemon Hill Mansion, Chamounix Mansion, Rockland Mansion, the Ohio House, built for the Centennial Exposition of 1876. Sedgeley Mansion was built in 1799 on Lemon Hill abandoned and demolished after being acquired through eminent domain by the city in 1857.
The Sedgeley property included a servant's cottage constructed of stone which still exists. The cottage was designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe and is presently known as the Sedgeley Porter's House. Philadelphia portal List of parks in Philadelphia Philadelphia Aquarium Subaru Cherry Blossom Festival of Greater Philadelphia Sedgley Woods Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club Fazio, Michael W; the Domestic Architecture of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Johns Hopkins University Press Moss, Roger W..
Delaware River
The Delaware River is a major river on the Atlantic coast of the United States. It drains an area of 14,119 square miles in five U. S. states: Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania. Rising in two branches in New York state's Catskill Mountains, the river flows 419 miles into Delaware Bay where its waters enter the Atlantic Ocean near Cape May in New Jersey and Cape Henlopen in Delaware. Not including Delaware Bay, the river's length including its two branches is 388 miles; the Delaware River is one of nineteen "Great Waters" recognized by the America's Great Waters Coalition. The Delaware River rises in two main branches that descend from the western flank of the Catskill Mountains in New York; the West Branch begins near Mount Jefferson in the Town of Jefferson in Schoharie County. The river's East Branch begins at Grand Gorge near Roxbury in Delaware County; these two branches flow west and merge near Hancock in Delaware County, the combined waters flow as the Delaware River south. Through its course, the Delaware River forms the boundaries between Pennsylvania and New York, the entire boundary between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, most of the boundary between Delaware and New Jersey.
The river meets tide-water at the junction of Morrisville and Trenton, New Jersey, at the Falls of the Delaware. The river's navigable, tidal section served as a conduit for shipping and transportation that aided the development of the industrial cities of Trenton and Philadelphia; the mean freshwater discharge of the Delaware River into the estuary of Delaware Bay is 11,550 cubic feet per second. Before the arrival of European settlers, the river was the homeland of the Lenape Native Americans, they called the river Lenapewihittuk, or Lenape River, Kithanne, meaning the largest river in this part of the country. In 1609, the river was first visited by a Dutch East India Company expedition led by Henry Hudson. Hudson, an English navigator, was hired to find a western route to Cathay, but his discoveries set the stage for Dutch colonization of North America in the 17th century. Early Dutch and Swedish settlements were established along the lower section of river and Delaware Bay. Both colonial powers called the river the South River, compared to the Hudson River, known as the North River.
After the English expelled the Dutch and took control of the New Netherland colony in 1664, the river was renamed Delaware after Sir Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman and the Virginia colony's first royal governor who defended the colony during the First Anglo-Powhatan War. The Delaware River is named in honor of Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman and the Virginia colony's first royal governor who defended the colony during the First Anglo-Powhatan War. Lord de la Warr waged a punitive campaign to subdue the Powhatan after they had killed the colony's council president, John Ratcliffe, attacked the colony's fledgling settlements. Lord de la Warr arrived with 150 soldiers in time to prevent colony's original settlers at Jamestown from giving up and returning to England and is credited with saving the Virginia colony; the name of barony is pronounced as in the current spelling form "Delaware" and is thought to derive from French de la Guerre. It has been reported that the river and bay received the name "Delaware" after English forces under Richard Nicolls expelled the Dutch and took control of the New Netherland colony in 1664.
However, the river and bay were known by the name Delaware as early as 1641. The state of Delaware was part of the William Penn's Pennsylvania colony. In 1682, the Duke of York granted Penn's request for access to the sea and leased him the territory along the western shore of Delaware Bay which became known as the "Lower Counties on the Delaware." In 1704, these three lower counties were given political autonomy to form a separate provincial assembly, but shared its provincial governor with Pennsylvania until the two colonies separated on June 15, 1776 and remained separate as states after the establishment of the United States. The name became used as a collective name for the Lenape, a Native American people who inhabited an area of the basins of the Susquehanna River, Delaware River, lower Hudson River in the northeastern United States at the time of European settlement; as a result of disruption following the French & Indian War, American Revolutionary War and Indian removals from the eastern United States, the name "Delaware" has been spread with the Lenape's diaspora to municipalities and other geographical features in the American Midwest and Canada.
The Delaware River's drainage basin has an area of 14,119 square miles and encompasses 42 counties and 838 municipalities in five U. S. states—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. This total area constitutes 0.4% of the land mass in the United States. In 2001, the watershed was 18% agricultural land, 14% developed land, 68% forested land. There are 216 tributary streams and creeks—an estimated 14,057 miles of streams and creeks—in the watershed. While the watershed is home to 4.17 million people according to the 2000 Federal Census, these bodies of water provide drinking water to 17 million people—roughly 6% of the population of the United States. The waters of the Delaware River's basin are used to sustain "fishing, power, cooling and other industrial and residential purposes." It is the 33rd largest river in the United States in terms of flow, but the nation's most used rivers in daily volume of tonnage. The average annual flow rate of the Delaware is 11,700 cubic feet per s
Girard Avenue Bridge
The Girard Avenue Bridge is an automobile and trolley bridge in Philadelphia, that carries Girard Avenue over the Schuylkill River. It connects the east and west sections of Fairmount Park, the Brewerytown neighborhood with the Philadelphia Zoo; the current bridge is the third built on the site. The first Girard Avenue Bridge was built 1852-55. Rudolph Hering is credited with the design, it carried Girard Avenue over the East River Drive, the Schuylkill River, the Schuylkill Canal, the West River Drive. A horse-drawn trolley was added in 1859; the trolley route became the SEPTA Route 15 trolley. The bridge was a three span timber; the bridge lasted less than 20 years. In December 1872, a grand jury found that it was dangerous. A temporary bridge was constructed, that served as falsework for the second bridge; the second Girard Avenue Bridge was built 1873-74, in anticipation of the 1876 Centennial Exposition, to be held in West Fairmount Park. It was designed by Clarke, Reeves & Company, built by the Phoenixville Bridge Company, cost $1,404,445.
When completed, it was believed to be the largest high bridge in the United States: 1000 feet in length and 100 feet in width. It opened on July 1874, three days after the Philadelphia Zoo. In 1895, the trolley crossing it was electrified; the bridge was a five span iron. The third and current Girard Avenue Bridge was built 1969-72; the ornate iron railings of the 1873-74 bridge were retained for the modern highway bridge. Trolleys crossing the bridge were replaced by buses in 1992, but SEPTA Route 15 trolley service was restored in 2005; the western terminus of the bridge is the congested intersection of 34th Street and West Girard Avenue. The Philadelphia Zoo occupies the southwest corner, the Mantua Junction Viaduct crosses over Lansdowne Drive and West Girard Avenue curves around the zoo; the Schuylkill Expressway's Philadelphia Zoo Exit is south of the intersection. Bridges portal Pennsylvania portal Philadelphia portal List of crossings of the Schuylkill River 16 photographs of the second Girard Avenue Bridge from Historic American Buildings Survey.
Video of a trolley crossing the third Girard Avenue Bridge from Flickr. Coordinates: 39.975229°N 75.193262°W / 39.975229.
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, his works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, by the 20th century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are still read today. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, campaigned vigorously for children's rights and other social reforms. Dickens's literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour and keen observation of character and society.
His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication. Cliffhanger endings in his serial publications kept readers in suspense; the instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, he modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features, his plots were constructed, he wove elements from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha'pennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers. Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age, his 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are frequently adapted, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London.
His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell, G. K. Chesterton and Tom Wolfe—for his realism, prose style, unique characterisations, social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, a vein of sentimentalism; the term Dickensian is used to describe something, reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters. Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, at 1 Mile End Terrace, Landport in Portsea Island, the second of eight children of Elizabeth Dickens and John Dickens, his father was temporarily stationed in the district. He asked Christopher Huffam, rigger to His Majesty's Navy and head of an established firm, to act as godfather to Charles. Huffam is thought to be the inspiration for Paul Dombey, the owner of a shipping company in Dickens's novel Dombey and Son.
In January 1815, John Dickens was called back to London, the family moved to Norfolk Street, Fitzrovia. When Charles was four, they relocated to Sheerness, thence to Chatham, where he spent his formative years until the age of 11, his early life seems to have been idyllic, though he thought himself a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy". Charles spent time outdoors, but read voraciously, including the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding, as well as Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas, he reread The Arabian Nights and the Collected Farces of Elizabeth Inchbald. He retained poignant memories of childhood, helped by an excellent memory of people and events, which he used in his writing, his father's brief work as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office afforded him a few years of private education, first at a dame school, at a school run by William Giles, a dissenter, in Chatham. This period came to an end in June 1822, when John Dickens was recalled to Navy Pay Office headquarters at Somerset House, the family moved to Camden Town in London.
The family had left Kent amidst mounting debts, living beyond his means, John Dickens was forced by his creditors into the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark, London in 1824. His wife and youngest children joined him there. Charles 12 years old, boarded with Elizabeth Roylance, a family friend, at 112 College Place, Camden Town. Roylance was "a reduced old lady, long known to our family", whom Dickens immortalised, "with a few alterations and embellishments", as "Mrs Pipchin" in Dombey and Son, he lived in a back-attic in the house of an agent for the Insolvent Court, Archibald Russell, "a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman... with a quiet old wife" and lame son, in Lant Street in Southwark. They provided the inspiration for the Garlands in The Old Curiosity Shop. On Sundays—with his sister Frances, free from her studies at the Royal Academy of Music—he spent the day at the Marshalsea. Dickens used the prison as a setting in Little Dorrit. To pay for his board and to help his family, Dickens was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station, where he earned six shillings
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is an art museum chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at Eakins Oval; the museum administers collections containing over 240,000 objects including major holdings of European and Asian origin. The various classes of artwork include sculpture, prints, photographs and decorative arts; the Philadelphia Museum of Art administers several annexes including the Rodin Museum located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, located across the street just north of the main building; the Perelman Building, which opened in 2007, houses more than 150,000 prints and photographs, along with 30,000 costume and textile pieces, over 1,000 modern and contemporary design objects including furniture and glasswork. The museum administers the historic colonial-era houses of Mount Pleasant and Cedar Grove, both located in Fairmount Park.
The main museum building and its annexes are owned by the City of Philadelphia and administered by a registered nonprofit corporation. Several special exhibitions are held in the museum every year, including touring exhibitions arranged with other museums in the United States and abroad; the attendance figure for the museum was 793,000 in 2017, which ranks it among the top one hundred most-visited art museums in the world. The museum is one of the largest art museums in the world based on gallery space. Philadelphia celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with the Centennial Exposition in 1876. Memorial Hall, which contained the art gallery, was intended to outlast the Exposition and house a permanent museum. Following the example of London's South Kensington Museum, the new museum was to focus on applied art and science, provide a school to train craftsmen in drawing, painting and designing; the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art opened on May 10, 1877..
The museum's collection began with objects from the Exposition and gifts from the public impressed with the Exposition's ideals of good design and craftsmanship. European and Japanese fine and decorative art objects and books for the museum's library were among the first donations; the location outside of Center City, was distant from many of the city's inhabitants. Admission was charged until 1881 was dropped until 1962. Starting in 1882, Clara Jessup Moore donated a remarkable collection of antique furniture, carved ivory, metalwork, ceramics, books and paintings; the Countess de Brazza's lace collection was acquired in 1894 forming the nucleus of the lace collection. In 1893 Anna H. Wilstach bequeathed a large painting collection, including many American paintings, an endowment of half a million dollars for additional purchases. Works by James Abbott McNeill Whistler and George Inness were purchased within a few years and Henry Ossawa Tanner's The Annunciation was bought in 1899. In the early 1900s, the museum started an education program for the general public, as well as a membership program.
Fiske Kimball was the museum director during the rapid growth of the mid- to late-1920s, which included one million visitors in 1928—the new building's first year. The museum enlarged its print collection in 1928 with about 5,000 Old Master prints and drawings from the gift of Charles M. Lea, including French, German and Netherlandish engravings. Major exhibitions of the 1930s included works by Eakins, Renoir, Cézanne, van Gogh, Degas. In the 1940s, the museum's major gifts and acquisitions included the collections of John D. McIlhenny, George Grey Barnard, Alfred Stieglitz. Early modern art dominated the growth of the collections in the 1950s, with acquisitions of the Louise and Walter Arensberg and the A. E. Gallatin collections; the gift of Philadelphian Grace Kelly's wedding dress is the best known gift of the 1950s. Extensive renovation of the building lasted from the 1960s through 1976. Major acquisitions included the Carroll S. Tyson, Jr. and Samuel S. White III and Vera White collections, 71 objects from designer Elsa Schiaparelli, Marcel Duchamp's Étant donnés.
In 1976 there were celebrations and special exhibitions for the centennial of the museum and the bicentennial of the nation. During the last three decades major acquisitions have included After the Bath by Edgar Degas and Fifty Days at Iliam by Cy Twombly; the City Council of Philadelphia funded a competition in 1895 to design a new museum building, but it was not until 1907 that plans were first made to construct it on Fairmount, a rocky hill topped by the city's main reservoir. The Fairmount Parkway, a grand boulevard that cut diagonally across the grid of city streets, was designed to terminate at the foot of the hill, but there were conflicting views about whether to erect a single museum building, or a number of buildings to house individual collections. The architectural firms of Horace Trumbauer and Zantzinger and Medary collaborated for more than a decade to resolve these issues; the final design is credited to two architects in Trumbauer's firm: Howell Lewis Shay for the building's plan and massing, Julian Abele for the detail work and perspective drawings.
In 1902, Abele had become the first African-American student to be graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Architecture, presently known as Penn's School of Design. Abele adapted classical Greek temple columns for
West River Drive Bridge
The West River Drive Bridge is a steel girder bridge built in 1966 over the Schuylkill River on West River Drive in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation maintains the bridge; the western end of this bridge is upstream from the western end of the Spring Garden Street Bridge, but the eastern end of this bridge is downstream from the eastern end of the Spring Garden Street Bridge. List of crossings of the Schuylkill River
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