History

Take a fascinating journey through the history of Shelter Island, New York with more than 200 vintage photographs and anecdotes from the locals who experienced it. With this striking new pictorial history, local artist and historian Louise Tuthill Green has created a journey into the island's past.

In the spring of 1962, Captain Nathaniel Sylvester and his young bride, Grissel Brinley, stepped from their boat onto the narrow shore along Gardiners Creek. Nearby, in a clearing, stood a sturdy house, newly built of white oak timber from the surrounding forest. Shiploads of tiles and chimney bricks from Holland and household furnishings from England and Barbados had arrived during the preceding months. The Sylvesters would make Shelter Island their home.

During the years that followed the Sylvesters' arrival, many families settled along these tranquil shores. Homesteads were built, farmland was cleared and cultivated, and businesses were established. Many boats sailed the area's sparkling inlets and bays, and guests to the area created a need for grand hotels and gingerbread cottages.

Shelter Island: A Nostalgic Journey takes us to early homes, churches, and stores, and introduces us to the people who shaped this community. With over two hundred images carefully selected from the archive of the Shelter Island Historical Society, this unprecedented volume will be treasured and enjoyed by resident and visitor alike.

Compiled by members and friends of the Lehigh Township Historical Society, Lehigh Township is a collection of rare vintage photographs of the community. The Cherryville Hotel (which in its heyday was known throughout the area as one of the best places to get Pennsylvania Dutch food), local quarries, one-room schoolhouses, Dieter's Foundry, and the Indian Trail and Edgemont amusement parks make up a sampling of the countless familiar images of Lehigh Township's past. Lehigh Township is an indispensable reference for both residents and visitors.

Author Jeff Mauro will keep you on the edge of your seat with stories and photographs of some of the biggest coaches, players, and teams in Pennsylvania high school hockey championship history.

Join author Nancy Siegel as she recounts the history of Juniata College through the lens of vintage images.

Since its beginning in 1876, Juniata College has remained a rare and distinguished institution. It takes an equally exceptional collection of photographs to illustrate the college's proud history. The following photographs, many of them never before published, tells the story in eloquent detail. Juniata College explores the first fifty years of the history of Juniata, from its simple origin in one room over a printing shop to the 1920s as Juniata emerged into a leading liberal arts college. Juniata College is a campus tour that includes visits to buildings no longer standing, recreations of many forgotten traditions, and a special chapter highlighting the town of Huntingdon. Picture postcards and posed snapshots, together with excerpts from historical documents, reveal an engaging story told in an informative and elegant style.

Pittsburgh's drinking culture is a story of its people: vibrant, hardworking and innovative. During Prohibition, the Hill District became a center of jazz, speakeasies and creative cocktails.

In the following decades, a group of Cuban bartenders brought the nightlife of Havana to a robust café culture along Diamond Street. Disco clubs gripped the city in the 1970s, and a music-centered nightlife began to grow in Oakland with such clubs as the Electric Banana. Today, pioneering mixologists are forging a new and exciting bar revival in the South Side and throughout the city. Pull up a stool and join Cody McDevitt and Sean Enright as they trace the history of Steel City drinking, along with a host of delicious cocktail recipes.

With its prime location along the Ohio River downstream from Pittsburgh, Sewickley was destined to become a great American town.

In 1753, a young George Washington traveled through the area on his way to inform the French that the British crown would not tolerate French trespass in the Ohio Valley. Meriwether Lewis mentioned the obstacle presented by its waterfront eddies in his 1803 journal. Eventually the area became home to river men, including the captains of steamers that plied the Ohio. After the arrival of the railroad, many of the railroad brass made their homes in Sewickley. With the automobile came the industrial barons of Pittsburgh, who erected their palatial summer ""cottages"" on Sewickley Heights. The town learned quickly to adjust to celebrities, taking in stride the likes of iron pioneers Henry Oliver and Benjamin Franklin Jones, author Mary Roberts Rinehart, composer Ethelbert Nevin, and Capt. Frederick Way Jr. Using historic postcards, Sewickley illustrates the history of this community, which maintains its status as the queen of Pittsburgh suburbs.

This colorful history of Pocono Mountain town Honesdale describes its beginning as a transport hub for coal, as well as its illustrious citizens.

Honesdale, Pennsylvania, nestled in the Pocono Mountains, is known for its picturesque views and colorful people. Named after Philip Hone, mayor of New York City and president of the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company, the area formerly known as Dyberry Forks was selected as the site to transport anthracite coal from the Wyoming Valley to New York City by gravity railroad and canal. Honesdale is the home of the Stourbridge Lion, the first locomotive to run on commercial tracks in the Western Hemisphere. Helping to shape Honesdale were such notable people as songwriter Dick Smith, five-star general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer, artist Jennie Brownscombe, and authors Homer Greene and Washington Irving. Honesdale is noted for having the world's smallest Jewish temple, and during the canal days, it had the world's largest stockpile of coal.

The Art Institute of Pittsburgh details the often eccentric history of this unforgettable school.

In the early 1920s, a young Pittsburgh artist and designer, Willis Dresdale Shook, recognized the need for a two-year course in commercial art. Within two years, the name changed to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. On October 1, 1921, the Artist's League of Pittsburgh held its first class of nine students in one room of the Fulton Building. Almost 90 years later, Shook's vision has grown to a community of more than 13,000 students and alumni of over 55,000 making their mark on the art, design, advertising, motion picture, entertainment, business, fashion, and culinary industries worldwide. The Art Institute of Pittsburgh inspires pride in the accomplishments of students, faculty, and alumni, along with chuckles at the outrageous memories that define the school's unmistakable essence and personality.

Though the area had been settled for generations, it was the coal demands of the 19th century that turned Nanticoke from a little village into a hub of industry.

In June 1748, 80 members Nentego tribe, from whom the name "Nanticoke'? is derived, grounded their canoes in the wilderness along the Susquehanna River in the area that would later be named the Wyoming Valley. While it was first a farming area, towns sprouted alongside the nearby Nanticoke Creek, but when coal was discovered, the first coal mine was in operation by 1825, and thus a new industry was born for this tiny town. Nanticoke owes its chief growth to the anthracite coal industry, which provided employment opportunities for thousands of European immigrants. Through their labor and strong work ethic, they established a superb city in which to live a full life, and left behind a magnificent history of their times.

The first photographic history of West Philadelphia over the last 100+ years.

The many neighborhoods west of the Schuylkill River across from William Penn's ""Quaker City"" were distinctly rural until 1860, when horsecar lines first crossed the river. The area soon became home to wealthy businessmen who built elegant mansions and villas in University City and Powelton Village. West Philadelphia's growth accelerated northward into Belmont and Parkside-Girard after the 1876 Centennial Exposition and westward into Cedar Park, Spruce Hill, and Walnut Hill in the 1890s with the introduction of electric trolley lines.

Images of the typical, modest West Philadelphia row houses, which slowly took over the open farmland after the Market Street Elevated opened in 1907, tell the story of how Philadelphia became known as the ""City of Homes."" Countless, rarely seen photographs of the streets where people lived and worked fill this extraordinary history.

From early homesteads to coke ovens to Lake Forest Park and the YMCA, journey through over 200 years of Scottsdale and Everson's history in this photographic tale.

Prior to the Great Depression, coal mines and coke ovens made Scottdale the wealthiest community in Westmoreland County. Once part of a region that was known as the world's largest producer of metallurgical coke, the area's prosperity created a thriving business district on the road to Pittsburgh, lined Chestnut Street with elegant Victorian mansions, and provided a home for a baseball farm team affiliated with the St. Louis Cardinals. Immigrants from Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean joined earlier Scotch Irish and German settlers to create a rich cultural heritage. Around Scottdale and Everson celebrates this ethnic diversity. Pictured within are views of early homesteads, coke ovens, mills, and places where residents lived, shopped, worshiped, and played, including Lake Forest Park and the YMCA. Although recent economic growth shifted to nearby interstate highways, Scottdale and Everson occupy a strategic gateway to the Laurel Highlands, which promises to attract new immigrants preferring to live near open spaces and in neighborhoods without strangers.

Philadelphia's Boxing Heritage: 1876-1976 retraces the legacy of determined battlers such as Joe Frazier, Benny Bass, Gil Turner, Bob Montgomery, and Bennie Briscoe. Philadelphia has also produced legions of highly skilled craftsmen such as Tommy Loughran, Jack O'Brien, Midget Wolgast, Harold Johnson, and Joey Giardello. In 1926, the Gene Tunney-Jack Dempsy heavyweight championship bout was witnessed by more than one hundred thousand fans. In 1956, Rocky Marciano brought his guns to town and won the heavyweight title from Jersey Joe Walcott. In 1971, Philadelphia-trained Joe Frazier won the "Fight of the Century" from Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden in New York. Philadelphia's Boxing Heritage: 1876-1976 showcases these legends and retraces their championship bouts through more than two hundred dazzling photographs.

Pennsylvania Hospital became America's first voluntary hospital, opening its doors on the eve of the American Revolution no less.

On the eve of the American Revolution, Pennsylvania Hospital opened its doors as a provincial charity for the physically and mentally ill. In a matter of decades, it became not only America's first voluntary hospital, but also the home of the first apothecary, medical library and surgical amphitheatre. From its radical conception by a group of extraordinary colonists, the hospital has evolved into a world-renowned facility that treats over 225,000 patients a year. In A History of the Pennsylvania Hospital, Kristen Graham introduces the people and ideas that guided the Pennsylvania Hospital through numerous wars and social and economic crises, landing it at the forefront of healing, learning and innovation.

Northeast Philadelphia chronicles this area's history of transformation, from scattered communities to an urban center.

Before the Consolidation Act of 1854 more than tripled the former capital's population, Northeast Philadelphia was a scattered group of pastoral communities just beyond the city limits. Holmesburg, Somerton and other small villages initially struggled but ultimately triumphed in their transition from rural townships to a bustling urban center. Dr. Harry C. Silcox has collaborated with Frank W. Hollingsworth to chart this fascinating evolution, from the demise of the family farm to neighbors uniting on the homefront during World War II. With such lively characters as Mary Disston, the founding mother of Tacony, and tales of the local effort for suffrage, Silcox and Hollingsworth create a brilliant and affectionate portrait of Northeast Philadelphia.

Visit the alleys of Philadelphia's Kensington and Fishtown neighborhoods for stories from the Speakeasy War and more.

The docks and alleys of Philadelphia's riverward neighborhoods teem with forgotten stories and strange histories. In the overlooked corners of Kensington and Fishtown are the launching of the Industrial Revolution, the bizarre double suicide of the Rusk twins and the violent Cramp Shipyard strike. With a collection of his "The Rest Is History" columns from the Fishtown Star, local historian Kenneth Milano chronicles little-known tales from the Speakeasy War of 1890 to stories of seldom-recognized hometown hero Eddie Stanky, who went on to play for the 1951 New York Giants. Join Milano as he journeys into the secret history of two of the city's oldest neighborhoods.

The Jewish Community around North Broad Street weaves the tale of the Jewish community in this part of Philadelphia through a collection of rare and stunning images. The construction of the North Broad Street subway in the 1920s and the row house Jewish community known as Logan are parts of this story. The development of business districts led to a more cohesive north and northwest Jewish community that allowed for satellite Jewish enclaves to flourish, complete with their own synagogues, bakeries, kosher meat markets, and hundreds of other shops that served the general population. In the 1950s, new neighborhoods, such as Mount Airy and West Oak Lane, alleviated an acute housing shortage at a time when 110,000 Jews lived in north-central and northwest Philadelphia.

The Jewish Community of West Philadelphia portrays Jewish life throughout West Philadelphia in the mid-twentieth century, including rare and vintage photographs.

The Jewish community of Philadelphia west of the Schuylkill River is a composite of seven distinct neighborhoods surrounding West Philadelphia proper. These include Fortieth and Girard, Parkside, Wynnefield, Overbrook Park, Wynnefield Heights, Southwest Philly, and Island Road. A gathering of seventy-five thousand Jewish people in West Philadelphia during the twentieth century qualified the area known as ""a city within a city"" as a second settlement area. Excellent public transportation included the famed Market Street Elevated. The West Philadelphia Jews flourished and supported dozens of synagogues and bakeries, and more than one hundred kosher butcher shops at the neighborhood's height from the 1930s through the 1950s. Newly arrived immigrants embraced traditional Jewish values, which led them to encourage their offspring to acquire a secondary education in their own neighborhoods as a way of achieving assimilation into the community at large. The Jewish Community of West Philadelphia portrays Jewish life throughout West Philadelphia in the mid-twentieth century. The book captures rare, nearly forgotten images with photographs gleaned from the community at large.

Guardian Dams. Today, most people remember Johnstown for a cataclysmic flood, but the city was also once known for steel.

From the early 1900s through much of the 1970s, millions of gallons of water per day were necessary to keep the city’s main industry alive. This is the story of the dams that didn’t fail, safely keeping the people of Johnstown and its steel industry prosperous for decades. It is also the story of transformation, for the dams built by an extinct steel company still stand and now safeguard areas of great natural resources and ecological importance in the highlands of Northern Appalachia. Surveying more than a century of wars, labor strife and economic catastrophe, author Joshua Penrod interweaves the story of these dams with the history of Johnstown itself.

Captivating and entertaining, this new collection of historic images brings to life the past of Glenshaw, Pennsylvania, focusing on the period between the mid-1800s to the 1940s.

Captivating and entertaining, this new collection of historic images brings to life the past of Glenshaw, Pennsylvania, focusing on the period between the mid-1800s to the 1940s. With insightful captions and breathtaking images, readers are introduced to many of the early residents who shaped the future of this area of Shaler Township, and we are transported back in time to see early homes and places of work, play, worship, and education. In 1800, John Shaw Sr. purchased 600 acres of land just 8 miles north of the city of Pittsburgh. He built a log sawmill to prepare lumber for his home, and later built a log gristmill which stood until 1845 when his son replaced it with a larger mill. The new mill stood on property across from the local school, and the area became known as "Shaw's Glen. During the period covered in this book, Shaler Township, incorporated in 1837, grew from a quiet milltown of just 2,000 residents to a bustling suburb of the Steel City. Today, over 33,000 people call this area home.

Beyond the world famous artists, singers, actors and more from Pittsburgh are the city's celebrities known locally for their quirky style, unique mannerisms, and outlandish behavior.

From Joe Barker, the violent "street preacher" who was elected mayor in 1850--while in prison!--to Curt Wootton, the comedian whose celebrity status comes from being "Pittsburgh Dad," on Youtube, the Steel City has had a number of colorful characters throughout its history that defy category.

Perkasie, named after William Penn's country manor in Upper Bucks County, was a boomtown that sprang up along the North Pennsylvania Railroad in the late 1870s.

From the 1880s to the 1920s, Perkasie grew rapidly, becoming a transportation and cultural center and drawing crowds with commerce, industry, summer retreats, and even an amusement park. Through nearly 200 vintage postcards, Perkasie chronicles the expansion of this once small town as well as its impact on neighboring rural communities such as Rockhill, Bedminster, and Silverdale. The postcards in this book re-create a visual memory of the economic and social changes that worked to shape this dynamic community.

Join Michele S. Davidson as she documents Nether Providence's fascinating growth and development over the last three centuries.

In 1682, John Sharpless settled in Nether Providence Township on a 1,000-acre tract of land along Ridley Creek that had been granted to him by William Penn. Other settlers soon followed, establishing Nether Providence as a small, successful, farming community. Over the next two centuries, Nether Providence grew into a thriving manufacturing center with 14 operating mills along the township's two creeks. At the turn of the 19th century, Nether Providence became a summer resort area rivaling the Main Line of Philadelphia, with such famous residents as Dr. Horace Howard Furness, a well-regarded Shakespearean scholar and the brother of architect Frank Furness, and Alexander Kelly McClure, the owner of the Philadelphia Times and an assistant adjunct general appointed by Pres. Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. In 2007, Wallingford, the largest community in Nether Providence, was named by Money Magazine as the ninth best place to live in the United States.

Visit the spectacular scenery and history of the settlers, borders and tourists who populated the Eastern Poconos.

Eastern Poconos: Delaware Water Gap to Bushkill provides a visual history of one of the most picturesque areas of the Northeast. With rare insight, a vast amount of knowledge, and a great deal of research, the evolution of the region from the arrival of the first European settlers throughthe golden age of tourism and beyond is depicted. Grand old hotels and modest boarding houses that have long sincedisappeared are featured, along with spectacular scenery. Also showcased are images of ordinary and extraordinary people, from farmers who tilled the land to celebrities whose meteoric rise to stardom began in the summer stock theaters and resorts of this area.

Ambler, a working-class town located fifteen miles north of Philadelphia, boasts some of the grandest homes in Montgomery County.

Ambler's evolution is rooted in the mills that sprang up along the Wissahickon Creekin the 1680s. The town entered the industrial age when the North Penn Railwaypushed through in the 1850s. In 1856, a catastrophic head-on train collision killing fifty-nine created the heroine Mary Ambler, whose generous ministrations to the wounded caused the railroad in 1869 to rename its Wissahickon Stationin her honor. But it was Philadelphia manufacturers Henry G. Keasbey and Richard V. Mattison who changed Ambler's character forever. When they relocated their business to Ambler in 1881, it became the asbestos capital of the world.

Frank D. Quattrone, an editor at Montgomery Newspapers, has written extensively on the history of Montgomery County.Amblercaptures the lasting legacy of Mattison's thriving company town, with its array of fanciful and simple homes, churches, shops, and cultural institutions.

Discover America's first university through a unique collection of images, highlighting centuries of student life on and around campus.

By the time photography was invented in the 1830s, the University of Pennsylvania, America's first university, was nearly a century old. University of Pennsylvania, a unique photographic collection, focuses on the school's history at its present campus in West Philadelphia beginning shortly after the end of the Civil War and provides images of more than a century of student life inside and outside the classroom. In every category, from campus landmarks to the student body to the traditions that bind the community together, these photographs demonstrate the close connections between Penn's present and its past. They also reveal historical aspects of the Penn experience that have since vanished.

A tapestry of the visual history of Greencastle-Antrim that stretches from the early settlement of the region into the 1960s.

Located in the heart of Pennsylvania's picturesque and historic Cumberland Valley, Greencastle and neighboring Antrim Township are all-American communities with a rich heritage that spans several centuries. The area witnessed American Indian raids, the Civil War, agricultural and industrial growth and decline, the heyday of the iron horse, and many other events linked directly with the history of the nation.

Displayed here are images of colonial forts, soldiers from the Civil War and other conflicts, historic homes and churches, business and industry, and events unique to the area, such as Old Home Week. Rare images, many of which have never been published, will guide readers, as they will be sure to enjoy this pictorial history of one of Pennsylvania's most historic communities.