And the winners are...everybody

I think I've made my choices on which North Philly sites I am going to spotlight. I will stick with my original idea of focusing on historical sites with deep roots in the community. Eastern State Penitentiary, Girard College, the Wagner Free Institute of Science, the Divine Lorraine, and the Baptist Temple @ Temple.

There will also be an honorable mention page on three institutions that were not selected for deeper examination. They are very interesting places and I'm looking forward to learning about them. Two of them fulfill the historic requirement: the Uptown Theater and the Legendary Blue Horizon. The third honorable mention is the Philadelphia Doll Museum, which was only founded in 1988. However they have an historic collection of dolls, including the largest collection of African-American dolls in the country.

Thanks for your feedback during this search.

A list of more places...

I found out that the Chapel of the Four Chaplains has moved from North Philly to the old navy yard, so I will not be using it for the project. However, the story of what inspired the foundation of the Chapel is very moving and worth reading.


Back to North Philly--

Here's the list so far:

Eastern State Penitentiary

Girard College

Apollo Theater

Wagner Free Institute of Science

Divine Lorraine Hotel

Uptown Theater

The Baptist Temple @ Temple University

The Philadelphia Doll Museum

The list has expanded to eight institutions (I think I'm supposed to be narrowing them. I will from here. The Philadelphia Doll Museum is an honorable mention. It was founded in the 80s, but seems like a cool place. The more I research North Philly the more great buildings and organizations I find. I hope to have the final list by next weekend. If you have any opinions, let me know, and I will take them under advisement. Definites are Eastern State because old prisons are fascinating for me and Girard College because my father and uncle went there.

List of Places

I have come up with a list of places in North Philly that I would like to have on my website. It's not completely firm: Wagner Free Institute of Science, Girard College, Eastern State Penitentiary, the Apollo Theater, a baptist church that is escaping me at the moment, and the Divine Lorraine hotel. For color schemes I would like to use some toned down colors for part of the website because many of these places are made from wood and brick. But I would also like to intersperse it with some of the brilliant color of the murals painted in that part of the city. It would also bridge the time frames of then and now.

thanks for the feedback!

I really appreciate what everyone wrote on their comments. Thanks! It's keeping me on the straight and narrow. Some have said that I shouldn't be swayed by public opinion, and that is sound advice. All of them would be fun to do. So I'm thinking I'll stay local and discover North Philly. Maybe I'll use feathered dinosaurs for my content registration (INFO 622) topic. I think it might be too difficult to get access to images that I could use legally. I could use some aspect of Russian history for my special collections class (INFO 669). Just an idea that would wrap it up nice and neat.

more info on feathered dinosaurs

I got multiple requests and admonishments for more information about feathered dinosaurs. I didn't think it would be such a hit so I didn't post any links. One is a press release from American Museum of Natural History about the evidence in the fossil record about feathered dinosaurs. The next is an academic paper. For a skeptic's article, click here.

Since dinosaurs seem like such a popular topic, I'll reconsider. I was leaning towards the North Philadelphia project.

Hope everyone had a great weekend.

Most likely project topic and recommended sites

I want to write a little bit about the three websites I postesd. Freewillastrology is Rob Breszny's site. His horoscopes used to appear in the City Paper, but I don't think they do anymore. The messages he writes are very obscure and more about how to think of your life and yourself more than prediction. The website also has the Beauty and Truth Lab and other positive and entertaining writings.

The second is the site for the Association of Tennis Professionals; the ATP runs the men's side of tennis. Here you can get results, schedules, bios, rankings, and even watch tennis matches live. I'm a tennis junkie, so I love it. The WTA runs a site for women's tennis.

The last one is Facebook, which is a lame choice, I know. But I just registered as the last person on the planet to not have a facebook page. I have been catching up with people who I never thought I would see again from high school, grade school, and college.

Possible topics for my website are the gems of North Philadelphia, feathered dinosaurs, or something concerning Russian history. I recently went to a lecture and the Wagner Fee Institute of Science at 17th Street and Montgomery. It was a wonderful museum, complete with archives and library. Even though I've grown up in Philadelphia, I don't know a whole lot about North Philly. Like many people I just thought of it as a ghetto and Temple, but over the years I've been to a few institutions that are steeped in tradition and that contribute to the history of this city. Some others include the Chapel of the Four Chaplins and Girard College.

Feathered dinosaurs are just way cool. I was a dinosaur freak when I was a kid, and even considered pusuing palentology, but ultimately decided on library science instead.

Russia is so intriguing to me. Growing up in the Cold War, all I ever learned was that they were the bad guys. But the nations is a link between Europe and the Far East, and there's so much to it that we never learn like the differents peoples that make up the country, how it began, and what about the Romanovs that preceded Nicholas II.

Welcome Post

I'm Alex Miller, and I'm studying Library and Information Sciences at Drexel University. Luckily, I don't have a day job. I haven't been in school for a long time, but it's a different experience now then it was when I was an undergraduate. Unluckily, I am living on borrowed money, which has its own stresses. I would like to work in archives when I graduate as well as to learn more about possible openings in law enforcement, but I have many interests and am willing to look around.


Some of my favorite websites are http://www.freewillastrology.com/, http://www.atpworldtour.com/, and http://www.facebook.com/.