The Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Center City Philadelphia
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| Formation | 1824 |
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| Type | Historical Society |
| Headquarters | 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. 19107 |
President and CEO | David R. Brigham[1] |
| Website | hsp |
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a historic research facility headquartered on Locust StreetinCenter City Philadelphia. It is a repository for millions of historic items ranging across rare books, scholarly monographs, family chronicles, maps, press reports and varied ephemera, reaching back almost 300 years, and accessible on the society's website.
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a historical society founded in 1824. Membership was regulated by the statutory of the association. Article IV of the statute states that, "the members of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania shall be deemed qualified voters at the meetings and elections, who have subscribed to the Constitution, and who have paid all their dues to the Society".[2][3]
The society houses some 600,000 printed items and over 19 million manuscript and graphic items. It maintains printed collections on Pennsylvania and regional history and manuscript collections covering 17th, 18th, and 19th-century history. The holdings of the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies were added in 2002, and those of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania in 2006.
The society has recently undertaken efforts to appeal to a younger demographic through its Young Friends programming. [4]
The society's building on the southwest corner of 13th and Locust Streets was formerly the site of the Patterson Mansion. General Robert Patterson, a general of the Mexican-American and Civil Wars, purchased the mansion from John Hare Powel, the founder of the Pennsylvania Agricultural Society. After Patterson's death in 1881, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania purchased the mansion as its permanent home. The mansion was demolished between 1905 and 1909 and the main block of a new fireproof building, again designed by Addison Hutton, was constructed on site. The totally fireproof building was dedicated in 1910. The building is listed on Philadelphia's Register of Historical Places.
The Society's collections include a number of different types of materials:
To help researchers find the materials they need, all of these resources are available through the "Online Catalogs and Research Tools" of the society's web site.[5]
The society publishes Sidelights, a semi-annual newsletter, Pennsylvania Legacies, a semi-annual illustrated history magazine, and the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, a quarterly scholarly journal published since 1877.
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