Huzzah! (almost) 100 years at 1300 Locust Street

2010 will mark the 100^th anniversary of the current home of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, located at 13^th and Locust streets.

HSP circa 1940. The facade looks almost exactly the same today.

It is a milestone for a building that most people walk by without giving a second glance.   Just how did HSP come to live at this site?  Here’s a quick rundown of our pre-Locust Street history.

HSP was founded in 1824 by William Rawle Jr., Roberts Vaux, Thomas I. Wharton, and others “for the purpose of elucidating the history of the State.”  Early meetings were held in various locales, including Thomas Wharton’s house; but by 1826, the Society was housed in rooms at the American Philosophical Society.  In 1844, the Society moved to 115 South Sixth Street, into a building then owned by the Pennsylvania Life Insurance Company.

Just a few years later, in 1847, the Society moved a block down Sixth Street to #219, into rented space in the newly-built home of the Athenaeum.  The Society lived here for 25 years.

The Athenaeum of Philadelphia, circa 1940

In 1872, the Society moved to the “Picture Building,” overlooking the grounds of Pennsylvania Hospital, where it remained for about another 12 years.

The "Picture Building" at the Pennsylvania Hospital circa 1940

A large mansion at the corner of 13^th and Locust streets once owned by General Robert Patterson of the Mexican War came up for sale in 1883, and the Society jumped on the opportunity to buy the building for its ever-expanding collections.  Located near several influential institutions that marked the westward expansion of Philadelphia in the 1800s, such  as City Hall, the Academy of Music, the Union League, and the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Society purchased the well-placed mansion and an adjoining lot in 1884.

Watercolor of the Patterson Mansion by David J. Kennedy, 1836

In the Patterson Mansion, the Society rapidly grew, both in terms of membership and collections.  As more and more “valuable treasures” entered the building, concerns grew over the safety of such materials in a building that was not fireproof.  Hence, in 1901, the Society announced a capital campaign for a new fireproof building.  Construction began in 1904 and was completed in 1907.  The building was formally opened to the public in 1910.

HSP in 1906

For further information, check out these two books, both of which are in HSP’s library:  Hampton J. Carson’s History of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (1940) and Sally F. Griffith’s Serving History in a Changing World (1999).

What use is a blog?

Spurred by a spate of positive comments about, first, the Chew blog and now Fondly, Pennsylvania, I have been thinking a lot about how readers use the information they gather from following our blog offerings.

I was really pleased to know that Seth Bruggeman has been using our blogs in his Public History and American Studies classes at Temple, and equally excited to have Timothy, one of Seth’s students, blogging with us here.  I know that several other professors have used the Chew blog in their history courses, and I recently heard from Matt Herbison that Susan Davis has also used the Chew blog in her archives courses at Drexel.  All of this leaves me cheering.  I have connected with other archives bloggers about what they’re doing, and it has helped me to shape my ideas about how to use this valuable resource.  This whole digital community idea seems to be unfolding beautifully.  The only part missing is direct feedback from users.

How do we know what will mean something to you, our dear readers?  How can we keep you reading along?  How can we serve up the most interesting, tantalizing behind the scenes views from our shop?

I guess, in many ways, this is always the problem with information management.  We provide many tools to our users, but it is sometimes difficult to know which ones serve them best.  So we do user studies or solicit feedback from our patrons.  Or we just guess.

Up until now, we’ve just been guessing here at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.  We’re putting out the stories of what we’re doing, and people seem to be reading along, but we don’t really know why.  Is it because we have a nice look about us?  Do you appreciate our sometimes serious, sometimes silly approach?  Or is it really the collections that grab you?  What pleases you?

No, really, I’m asking…

I would love to hear from you–any and all of you–about how you use our blogs.  Please leave us a comment to tell us what you love, what you wish there were more of, and even what you could really do without.  Tell us what you do with the information you gather here–is it sheerly for pleasure?  Are you an archivist, conservator, or historian who likes to keep up with the field?  What use is this blog to you?  I would especially encourage those of you who were followers of the Chew blog and have now migrated to Fondly, Pennsylvania to respond.  I really look forward to hearing from some of you.

Thank you for reading, and for your thoughtful feedback.

Fondly,  Cathleen

Veteran’s/Armistice Day

Alfred Reginald Allen, Sr.

Alfred Reginald Allen (1876-1918) was a prominent Philadelphia neurologist and neurosurgeon. He was also heavily involved in Philadelphia theater scene, writing numerous comic operas, and was a founding member of the Savoy Company. In 1915 he enlisted in the Army Reserves, eventually achieving the rank of Lieutenant Commander. In this letter written from training camp to his father, Rev. George Pomeroy Allen, Allen explains a little bit about why he left a successful life as a doctor to risk his life in a war unlike any seen before.

"...I felt that the country was drifting inevitably into war and I wished to be as highly trained as possible for when the time should come."

In the summer of 1918 Allen’s reserve unit was called into action. He was killed in action on September 30 in the Battle of Argonne. Here is the official telegram sent to Allen’s wife, Helen Warren Allen, informing her of her husband’s death. Note that the telegram is sent over a month after Allen was killed. I can only imagine the anguish that the Allen family, and indeed families all across the country, must have felt while waiting for official word about their loved ones.

After Allen’s death many of his troops and colleagues sent letters of condolence to his family. Here is just one of those from an enlisted man under Allen’s command.

The Allen Family Papers is a rich collection with many stories to tell. This particular facet is especially significant as we celebrate Veteran’s Day.

HSP houses many other collections with World War I-related content.  Here are a few highlights:

• Jones and Taylor families papers (# 2037)–The papers of William Johnson Taylor II, document his service as an officer in the US Army Medical Corps on the Western front in France.  See finding aid for inventory: http://www.hsp.org/files/findingaid2037jonestaylor.pdf
• Perot family papers (# 1886)–Sarah Hallowell’s letters provide vivid details about life in France during and after World War I.  See finding aid for inventory: http://www.hsp.org/files/findingaid1886perot.pdf
• Frederick C. Penfield papers (# 1752) document, in letters and photos, life in Austria-Hungary during World War I.
• Committee of Public Safety for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania records (# 1551) offers extensive information about the war effort on the home front and attempts to provide assistance for  people and businesses in Pennsylvania.
• South Philadelphia Liberty Loan Committee records (# 217) document local war fundraising activities through correspondence, ephemera, and other materials.
• Carlotta Herring Brown collection (# 83) contains journals and notes documenting World War I.
• Philadelphia War Photograph Committee collection (V 03) documents participation in the war on the home front.

Ephemera from the Mrs. E. Russell Jones Collection (#738)

These are just a few of the collections illuminating World War I’s impact at home and abroad.

Getting There is Half the Fun

While working with the Allen Family Papers I came across some travel journals with ephemera from the trips (mostly postcards) laid in. The journals span 1909 to 1934 and cover the family’s trips to Europe (with one exception of a trip to California via the Panama Canal).

The journals presented a somewhat perplexing question. The earlier journals were written by Alfred Reginald Allen Sr. (1876-1918) while the later ones were written by Alfred Reginald “Reggie” Allen Jr. (1905-1988). What’s odd is that even though different people wrote them at different times, the journals all look physically the same; a small green canvas binder with three-holed notebook paper inside. I had to wonder how this could be. I figured that Allen Sr. purchased several binders at once and that Reggie continued to use them as travel journals after his father’s death. Another possibility is that Reggie put his father’s writings into the same type of binders he was using sometime after his father’s death. If I had to guess, I would say that the former is probably the case since the paper inside is such a rare size to find.

Since these journals were written well before the time that trans-Atlantic air travel came into being, the first and last portions of the journals always document the trip across the Atlantic and back via ocean liner. Being an avid ocean liner buff I found these portions, particularly the related ocean liner ephemera included, to be the most interesting.

At a time when a trip to Europe meant spending about a week at sea ocean liners had to be more than basic transport but more akin to a floating city. The various companies (notably the German and British lines) competed to outdo each other in size, speed and grandeur to lure passengers to book passages on their ships. Essentially they wanted to make the ship itself a destination. With that in mind, traveling during the heyday of the ocean line gives truth to the old adage: “Getting there is half the fun.”

Reggie and sister Helen having fun during a voyage in 1913.

Passenger lists on the best ships tended to read like a veritable Who’s Who of American and European society. The French line Compagnie Générale Transatlantique went so far as to print lists of passengers for the passengers. Maybe this was that well to do people could plan whom they would be dining with aboard the ship (getting a “good” table was of the utmost importance).

Although commercial air travel was available starting in the 1920’s it did not really take off (no pun intended) until the 1950’s. Commercial jets such as the DeHavilland Comet and the Boeing 707 provided passengers with a much faster and cheaper way of crossing the Atlantic. By the 1960’s the age of the ocean liner was all but over. But in the first decades of the twentieth century, air travel was more of a novelty as this brochure from the London Aerodrome (dated 1913) that was with the journals can attest to.

For a fee one could be flown around the London Aerodrome.

HSP’s Adopt-a-Collection Program

This past Friday I gave a presentation in Jersey City about HSP’s Adopt-a-Collection program, which allows people to donate money earmarked for processing and conserving a specific collection. My talk was part of a panel on “creative funding” for archives, at the fall meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC). There were three of us on the panel. Yvonne Carignan from the Historical Society of Washington, DC offered advice on how to recruit and manage volunteers, Joseph Anderson from the American Institute of Physics described their successful e-commerce program marketing images from their collections, and I talked about Adopt a Collection. About thirty people attended – not bad for a late-afternoon session on the Friday before Halloween. In this blog post I’ll summarize the highlights of my talk.

WPA poster being cleaned

The Adopt a Collection page has a prominent place on HSP’s web site. Here we feature listings for a variety of collections, each with a paragraph of description, an image or two, and a cost estimate. People can contribute the full cost of working on a collection or just a part; in return they are recognized in the finding aid and invited to visit HSP and see the fruits of the work they’ve paid for. In addition to this online face of the program, sometimes our Development staff invites specific people to adopt specific collections. If Development knows that a prospective contributor is interested in a particular topic, they may ask Library staff to suggest some collections that fit this interest and that could benefit from adoption.

HSP collections that have been adopted through the program have varied widely in terms of topic, historical period, size, etc. Some examples include:

• Lantern and Lens Gild of Women Photographers records
• Lea & Febiger records (a Philadelphia publishing house founded by Mathew Carey)
• Work Projects Administration posters from the 1930s
• Joseph Smith Harris correspondence (a 19th-century engineer involved in the Northwest Boundary Survey, Civil War naval operations, and the railroad industry)
• Caroline Katzenstein papers (Pennsylvania women’s suffrage activist)
• Christopher Marshall diaries (Philadelphia druggist and political leader during Revolutionary War era).

Overall, since we started the Adopt a Collection program in 2005, eighteen different donors have contributed a total of almost $90,000 to HSP, enabling us to process and conserve 24 collections totaling 292 linear feet. In addition, the program provided us with the funding match we needed for work on the 289-linear-foot Chew Family Papers, which was funded largely by the National Endowment for the Humanities. My favorite Adopt-a-Collection donation came from the Abington Junior High School History Club, which fundraised $157 for the Chew project in 2008 and then came back with another $400 this year. I went and met with the club in May, right before their summer break, and am hoping HSP can develop some kind of ongoing relationship with them.

miniature booklets from the Whiteman Family Papers

As this example suggests, Adopt a Collection does more than let us process and conserve collections. It also helps us connect with supporters we might not reach in other ways and gives people a concrete sense of engagement in our work. It helps us show the public some of what it takes (and what it costs) to preserve collections and make them available: behind-the-scenes activity that all too often gets taken for granted. Internally, Adopt a Collection has also helped to strengthen communication and collaboration between HSP departments. Library staff (Archives and Conservation) and Development staff generally live in different worlds, but this program brings us together and gives us a direct way to help each other out.

Adopt a Collection has its limitations. It is not a steady, reliable funding source, and the amount it has brought in has varied widely over the past few years. Also, not everything is fundable this way. Some collections are too large or require too much work; others aren’t photogenic or attractive enough to donors, even if they contain historical riches. But for HSP, Adopt a Collection has become an important part of our repertoire of sources that enable us to work on collections, along with our endowment, grants, interns and volunteers, etc.

Several factors have contributed to the success of our Adopt-a-Collection program. First and foremost are the many great collections we have been able to showcase, collections that appeal to many different interests. Good collaboration between Development and Library staff has played a big role as well. Third, HSP is fortunate to have a good network of supporters who are able to contribute money – in some cases a little, in others a lot of money. Lastly, the fact that we offer different price points for collection adoptions means that people don’t have to donate thousands of dollars in order to participate. Collections pegged at the $100 level have been very popular, and we are happy to receive support for them. As the Abington Junior High students demonstrate, success in this program isn’t only measured by the size of the check.

The Fruits of Our “Ghost Writer”

Followers of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s Question of the Week may already be familiar with Albert J. Edmunds, HSP’s former cataloger and (alleged) resident ghost. From 1891 to 1936, Albert was responsible for describing and subject cataloging HSP’s diverse set of collection material, creating many of the handwritten and, later, typed catalog cards that are still used to access our collections today—and perhaps still typed today by Albert’s spirit, as goes the local folklore.

Albert cataloged his own work, which details a supernatural experience.

The HSP staff in 1903; Albert is seated at the right in the back row.

While some may find HSP’s continued use of a card catalog quaint (or perhaps as a de facto tribute to Albert himself), others cannot deny its limited nature as an information access tool. Certainly this was recognized in the late 1990s when HSP worked with a vendor to digitally convert over 250,000 catalog cards (only those related to our print and genealogical materials) to MARC records. These records were ultimately migrated to our current OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) system, where remote and on-site users, as well as staff could much more easily and time-efficiently conduct their research via the Web.

Today, HSP’s 565,700 remaining catalog cards (i.e., those relating to our manuscript, broadside, music, African American, and graphics collections) exist in physical format only. However, as part of the Digital Center for Americana project, the 17,400 graphics cards will ultimately enter the digital realm via our soon-to-be-adopted Digital Asset Management System (DAMS). By adding the graphics catalog cards’ content to our DAMS, patrons and staff will have the ability to search and retrieve, for example, a photograph’s descriptive information alongside a digital reproduction of the photograph itself, bringing access to HSP’s visual material to an entirely new level. HSP will achieve the catalog conversion by again working with a vendor to digitally reformat the cards, the content of which then will be exported to CollectiveAccess, an open-source, web browser-based software that will manage all of HSP’s extant and future digital assets, including digital surrogates of physical collection material and born-digital collection objects. The catalog conversion work is expected to begin in the next few months. Adoption of CollectiveAccess is expected to take place in early 2010 and will initially showcase HSP’s ~3000-image digital collection, most of which were created to fulfill external reproduction orders throughout the years. The Digital Center for Americana project will yield approximately 5,000 new digital images. And digitization of our graphics collection material is expected to be ongoing and added to the DAMS regularly.

Memoirs of HSP Printing Proofs

Memoirs of HSP, before

There are few things in conservation work that excite me more than a substantial transformation of an item.  When I pulled out the bundles of dingy paper from an old box, it was exciting to envision them clean, flat and arranged neatly in folders!

The three bundles were bound in groups of roughly 100 sheets using a ribbon.  After removing the ribbons, I dry-cleaned the pages using eraser bits and a vulcanized rubber sponge.  The pages were then washed in deionized water and flattened in job presses.

Before

After

These items are part of the A. A. Humphreys collection and, as a fan of printing history, I found them especially interesting to work with.  Proof sheets were printed as drafts to be revised for final printing.  These sheets contain not only edits, revisions and marks by the proofreader, but I was excited to see the printer’s fingerprints and the use of dingbats and excess type to fill in spaces.

Print impressions

Transferred ink

Printer's fingerprint

Out of curiosity, I pulled the bound version of the 1864 printing of the Memoirs of HSP to see what revisions were made.

Revisions

Side by side

War/History/Claiming Voice

This week, I am working on finishing up the John Rutter Brooke Papers, the first collection I am processing as part of the Digital Center for Americana.

J.R. Brooke

The collections that are part of the project were chosen because of their Civil War-related content, so imagine my surprise when I realized that the Brooke collection has much more to do with the US Army’s “Sioux Campaign” in 1890-1891, which culminated in the slaughter of many hundreds of Lakota Sioux men, women and children at Wounded Knee.  Brooke also sat at the helm of the military takeover of Puerto Rico and Cuba in 1898-1899.   I spent more time than I should have reading through some of the letters about the military movements and directives leading up to Wounded Knee, but I couldn’t help myself.  Knowing the outcome of the situation already, I read these letters with a pounding heart as the communications increased between December 26th and  29th.

photo taken by the 3rd Infantry division

When I am working with material dealing with the nastiest chapters of our nation’s history, I am filled with a sense of sadness and heaviness as my worst feelings about the historical legacy of the United States are confirmed before my eyes.  I felt this in my last processing project, when I was reading through papers dealing with the Chew family’s plantations and the enslaved people who suffered without assurance of adequate food or clothing or the prospect of freedom.

I struggled to maintain a sense of objectivity about the people who created this record of history.  I wondered how to give a voice to those people whose voices were silenced through their enslavement.  I tried to give their names when I knew them, so that their stories could be uncovered by researchers and ancestors.  I feel this same sense of struggle when reading about Wounded Knee.  How can the real stories of these events be told?  My instinct directs me to contact indigenous groups who are documenting their own history so that they know about these papers and can use them to tell the story of their people.

As an archivist, I know my job is not to tell my version of history, however true and real it may feel to me.  I know that my sympathies lie with the people whose voices have rarely been heard in history texts, yet my job is to present descriptions of materials without bias (as much as that is possible for anyone).  These issues were brought to the forefront of my mind at the Chew event on October 14th, which was billed as a celebration of the end of the project.

I wanted to educate the event’s attendees about how many topical areas are covered in the collection, how rich the material is, and how much it can offer to scholars and researchers.  This “celebration” turned into a contentious discussion during the Q&A (read Matthew’s post for a more detailed perspective on the evening), but it got me thinking a lot about the view we bring to our work, and the language we use to describe what we have in front of us.  It matters–all of our biases and personal views and resistances are there in the way we choose words, the way we focus our attention, and the ways we are willing (or not) to engage in debate about these issues.  The fact that these issues are in the forefront of my mind now is extremely valuable, especially as I begin to describe another collection filled with painful, and potentially volatile, material.

We have much to heal in this country–prejudices related to ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, disability, and many other things do divide us.   These collections offer us an opportunity to work toward healing these divisions by giving the power of interpretation back to the public, and offering groups whose history has been erased or covered over the chance to reclaim some of their story.  While I bear a heavy burden when it comes to the choices I make in description, by making the papers accessible and available to researchers, their voices eventually become the conversation and my voice becomes more of a background hum that tells you where to find that paper with a date and name.  I do my best to provide access points and hope that groundbreaking and thoughtful histories come next.

“An Occasional Collection of Physiognomical Sketches. . .”

“. . .chiefly North American, and drawn from life; designed to preserve the characteristics features, personally, mentally, or officially [of] remarkable persons, and the endeared memory of private friends or public benefactors with professional notices &c. Philadelphia, 1790, 91, & 92.” (p. 396)

The preceding description, according to the October 1964 issue of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, accompanied a significant donation to HSP of silhouettes by artist Joseph Sansom.   The brief article gives a little bit of Sansom’s history—he was born in Philadelphia in 1767, and although he called himself a “merchant,” he was drawn to cultural activities in literature and the arts.  The article does not say how Sansom became a silhouette artist or if it was his primary means of making money; however the examples of his work included in the article are quite wonderful.  In the article they are described as such:

“The Sansom silhouettes are painted in black ink on paper approximately 4 ¾” x 3 ¾” in size. Delicate shading in gray wash is used occasionally to indicate hair or appropriate parts of the costume.  With a single exception, the artist himself has written identification, in ink, under the profile.”  (p. 401)

Silhouette of Mary Pleasants. Notice Sansom's added touches, the extra shading and the caption.

Along with Sansom’s painted silhouettes, there are also cut-out silhouettes from Peale’s Museum (formerly a natural history museum in Philadelphia that was set up by naturalist and painter Charles Willson Peale).  The cut-out silhouettes are wonderfully detailed and precise.  They were made on a physiognotrace machine that Peale purchased in 1802.  One of Peale’s workers, Moses Wilson, was eventually placed in charge of the machine and, with exacting detail, cut out many of the silhouettes himself.

Silhouette of David Rittenhouse. Paper cut-out backed with black paper.

Silhouette of Mary Runyon. Paper cut-out backed with black linen.

HSP’s set of silhouettes (Collection V87) from Samson, Peale’s Museum, and other collections includes a wide variety of items.  There are silhouettes of the famous (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson) and the not-as-famous. There are quarter, half, and full profiles.  Some silhouettes have added details and some are mounted and framed.  There are also elaborate paper cuts that are works of art in their own rights.  Most silhouettes are identified and many remain anonymous.

A selection of framed silhouettes

A book of cut silhouettes, all backed with bright blue paper

More framed silhouettes and paper cut designs

Most of the identified silhouettes are listed HSP’s graphics card catalog, but we hope to create a finding aid for this collection in the future.

The Allen Family Papers

Last week I began to create a finding aid for the Allen Family Papers. From what I can tell so far, the majority of the collection seems to be Alfred Reginald Allen Sr.’s (1876-1918) correspondences with his father, son, wife, and other family members. Leslie Hunt, a former archivist at HSP, had painstakingly inventoried some of this collection back in 2001. Given that and considering that my processing of the collection would be an experiment in minimal processing (see Mark A.Greene and Dennis Meissner’s “More Product, Less Process” for more information), I did not have the chance to really dig into this collection. However, what I could glean from this collection was an interesting story about the father and son relationships within this family.

Alfred Reginald Allen Sr. was a neurologist and neurosurgeon who earned his degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Allen also had a serious interest in musical theater. In his early adult life, he wrote numerous songs, some published, some not. He was also a founding member of the Savoy Company, a theater group that performed the works of Gilbert & Sullivan, which still exists today. However, Allen seems to have abandoned the theater world around 1907. His father, Rev. George Pomeroy Allen (1845-?) apparently exerted pressure on Alfred to focus exclusively on his medical pursuits. The previous archivist noted that this might have been because Alfred’s younger siblings, John Ernest and Nancy, were “free spirits” that caused the family much grief and that for this reason Rev. Allen pressured Alfred to be successful.

Before abandoning his theatrical pursuits entirely however, Alfred seemed to find a way to combine the theater and medical worlds. Here is a program for a medical-themed comic musical entitled “Evelyn and Mary” that Alfred wrote, scored, and acted in. “The American Neurological Association Comic Opera Company” presented the musical – perhaps this was a conglomerate of like-minded neurosurgeons?

Evelyn and Mary Program

One thing that from the musical that got a laugh out us was the number titled “I Want Your Brain and Spinal Cord.” Luckily, the collection contained the sheet music for this song.

In 1915 Alfred joined a reserve unit of the United States Army. In the summer of 1918 his reserve unit was called into action. Alfred wrote numerous letters to family first detailing his experiences at training camp, and then his experiences in the war-zone in France. From France he wrote a very sentimental letter to his son, Alfred Jr. (1905-1988), called Reggie in the family, in which he (perhaps realizing that there was a good chance he would not survive the war) instructs Reggie on how to be a man and also to follow whatever endeavors he wished. Reggie initially did not respond to this letter, and Alfred Sr. wrote a few letters to his wife asking why. Reggie, who was about 13 at this time, finally wrote back to his father explaining that he did not respond because the letter made him “feel so badly that I tried to forget it all.”

Sadly, Alfred Sr. never received this letter – he was killed in action in September 1918 during the Battle of Argonne. I can only imagine what young Alfred Jr. must have felt when this letter was returned to him marked “Killed in Action.”

However, Alfred Jr. seemed to take his father’s advice to heart. Perhaps following the path that his father could not take because of Alfred Sr.’s own father’s pressures, Alfred Jr. was much involved in the Philadelphia music community, eventually becoming General Manager of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the 1930’s.

This is another one of those interesting little stories that the collections at HSP have to tell. Uncovering these stories has been truly the most fascinating aspect of archival work for me. I hope to find (and share) many more!