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.
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As an undergraduate at Messiah College's Philadelphia campus (2026 N. Broad St.) in 2001, I took some journalism classes at Temple and wrote for the "Temple News" for a semester. One article I wrote that made it on the front page was about revitalization efforts to the north of campus, and mostly focused on the block with Uptown Theater and the Philadelphia Doll Museum. So it is encouraging both to see that both are still around and in use, and also that both "made the cut" for your site, more or less.
ReplyDeleteFrom the persective of someone who move to the Philadelphia area fairly recently, I think this is a great idea. Because of the reputation of certain areas, these types of places do not get the attention that the usual historical sites get. I can't wait to learn about some of these places.
ReplyDeleteThe Divine Lorraine! That place has quite an intriguing history - I think I heard something about a little bit of religious fanaticism going on there...like it was a hotel but also a cult of some kind? I'm a fool for a good story, though - never actually researched it myself. Now I can't wait to see what you come up with.
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