UPCOMING EVENTS:
Saturday, May 4 at 1 p.m. -- "Designing for the Dead: Art and Architecture at Laurel Hill" -- Laurel Hill Cemetery (East), 3822 Ridge Avenue, Philadelphia PA 19132.
Noted architects like John Notman, William Strickland, Frank Furness, John J. McArthur, C.C. Zantzinger, Horace Trumbauer, and Napoleon LeBrun competed fiercely for the chance to design for the dead. Join us on a walking tour of Laurel Hill East, where we will see monuments created by these early architects, as well as artists such as Alexander Milne Calder, his son Alexander Stirling Calder, and sculptress Harriet Frishmuth, whose works grace many of Laurel Hill’s memorials. The tour will examine changing tastes and fashions in grave markers over the past two centuries, from the classical obelisks and urns of the Federal period to the richly decorated crosses of the Gothic Revival, and the massive mausoleums of the Gilded Age. For more information or to buy tickets, click here.
Wednesday, August 21 at 6 p.m. -- "The Ladies of the Street" at the Ambler Library -- 209 Race Street, Ambler PA 19002
One of the few bright spots of the Sesqui-Centennial was the High Street of 1776, a recreation of a Federal-era Market Street lined with 22 reconstructions of vanished historic structures, from William Penn's Slate Roof House to the Jefferson Declaration House. Created by the Women's Committee, the Street of 1776 was the Sesqui's most popular single attraction, and one of the few to turn a profit. Other popular attractions created by women included Sulgrave Manor, a replica of the ancestral English home of the Washington family. The Ladies of the Street describes how Philadelphia women defied the corrupt Republican Organization to create some of the fair's most memorable monuments.
For information on talks, fees, references, etc., please contact Tom via the Contact page on this site or email him at mailto:thkeels@gmail.com.