Posted on 24 July 2023 by WestPhillyLocal.com
For more than 200 years, the 3500 block of Lancaster Avenue has been home to community centers, art spaces, theaters, and residences. The area includes evidence of some of the earliest houses built in West Philadelphia during the 1850s, and a new community archeology project aims to recover forgotten stories of the residents of the historic Black Bottom neighborhood before they were displaced in the 1960s when their homes were demolished to make way for what would become “University City.”
The “Heritage West: The West Philadelphia Community Archaeology Project” is a partnership between several community organizations and institutions, including HopePHL, the Black Bottom Tribe Association, the Community Education Center (CEC), University City Arts League, University of Pennsylvania, and Penn Museum. Using archaeological investigation, archival research, oral histories, and state-of-the-art technology, Heritage West team members are working together to unearth and preserve untold—or erased—histories dating from the 19th century to the present.
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Posted on 11 May 2023 by WestPhillyLocal.com
A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Community Resource Hub was held on Wednesday.
After more than two years in development and construction, a new Community Resource Hub has opened at 277 South 52nd St. The grand opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, attended by state and local officials, like State Sen. Vincent Hughes and City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, was held on Wednesday. The new three-story structure replaced a dilapidated former business.
The project represents a significant milestone for The Enterprise Center Community Development Corporation as the organization moves into a new phase of growth and larger strategic reinvestment plan for the historic 52nd Street commercial corridor.
The new Community Resource Hub will house offices for The Enterprise Center CDC on the first floor, extending outreach for business services along the corridor. The second and third floors will house market rate apartments, providing housing for individuals living and working along the corridor. The Enterprise Center is planning to utilize this model for more projects. Continue Reading
Posted on March 4, 2023 3:00 pm by WFIS Coordinator
Join us at the Wagner Free Institute of Science on Saturday, March 4th, 2023 for our open house and annual Westbrook Lecture. This year, Dr. Nathan Lents, professor and author, will be hosting a talk on his research regarding human evolution. He claims that us humans are not as ‘perfect’ as we seen to be; instead, our bodies are quite flawed. Humans have many anatomical errors and we have become experts at working around them. Dr. Lents will go on to explain how the many quirks and glitches in human anatomy tell us interesting things about our past and help us live in better harmony with our bodies.
The Wagner Free Institute of Science provides free science education to all ages through adult programs, lectures, field trips, and children’s lessons. It is also dedicated to preserving and interpreting its National Historic Landmark building, which was completed in 1865 and houses a Victorian-era lecture hall, an exhibit hall with more than 100,000 natural history specimens, and a rare book library. Continue Reading
Posted on 15 August 2022 by WestPhillyLocal.com
The City of Philadelphia has recently received $25 million in federal funding for the “Great Streets PHL” project, which aims to make safety improvements to high-crash corridors in historically disadvantaged communities and areas of persistent poverty.
The funding comes from a Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability & Equity (RAISE) Grant, funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
The funding will make improvements along seven high-crash corridors in the city, including the following streets in West Philadelphia: Continue Reading
Posted on 04 October 2021 by WestPhillyLocal.com
A new state-of-the-art U.S. Squash Center has officially opened over the weekend in the historic Pennsylvania State Armory Building on Drexel University’s campus. The center is named after the late Senator Arlen Specter who was a great fan of the sport.
The Specter Center will serve as US Squash headquarters and is currently hosting the 2021 U.S. Open Squash Championships. It will serve as the permanent home of the tournament, which brings the top players from around the world competing for the title. Continue Reading
Posted on November 5, 2020 6:30 pm by PennMuseum
Painted vases provide the most important visual evidence of life in ancient Greece. Drawing from the Penn Museum’s extraordinary vase collection, this four-session course will explore major themes in Greek culture and society and trace the development of Greek vase-painting, with emphasis on the pottery produced in the cities of Athens and Corinth.
The centerpiece of the course will be four of the most important Athenian vase-painters: Exekias, the Amasis Painter, the Kleophrades Painter, and the Berlin Painter. These painters decorated their vases with scenes of myth and daily life, opening a window on those subjects. The business of manufacturing and selling vases and the technology of making them will also be considered, drawing on Dr. Brownlee’s work at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens excavations in Corinth, Greece, where she has worked for many years.
The Penn Museum’s collection of vases excavated at the Etruscan site of Orvieto in the late 19th century will afford the opportunity to study archaeological “context” (the materials discovered alongside the vases). And the “provenance” (ownership history) of the Museum’s vase collection will be the starting point for investigating how Greek vases were collected in 19th-century America, especially in Philadelphia.
Ann Blair Brownlee, Ph.D., is Associate Curator in the Mediterranean Section and Adjunct Assistant Professor in Penn’s History of Art Department. She is a specialist in the archaeology of ancient Greece and has published widely on the pottery of Athens and Corinth. At present, she is studying the Museum’s collection of Attic black-figure pottery from excavations in the 1890s in the Etruscan city of Orvieto and preparing a study of the Archaic Corinthian pottery from the so-called “Potters’ Quarter” at the site of Ancient Corinth. She is interested in 19th-century collectors of antiquities, especially in Philadelphia, and in the history of museums, especially the Penn Museum and its building; she was co-author of its monumental Historic Structure Report.
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