Current Exhibition in the Library Company’s
Louise Lux-Sions and Harry Sions Gallery:

Capitalism by Gaslight:
The Shadow Economies of 19th-Century America

Drawing on books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, prints, photographs, and ephemera in the Library Company's collection, guest curator Wendy Woloson explores underground urban commerce in the 19th century in our exhibition "Capitalism by Gaslight: The Shadow Economies of 19th-Century America."

The exhibition focuses on how many Americans earned their livings outside the spheres of wholesale and retail commerce, conducting economic transactions in illicit and semi-legal ways. From pick-pocketing to gambling, counterfeiting to prostitution, "Capitalism by Gaslight" describes the myriad ways people participated in an earlier, shadowy realm of commerce that required a surprising degree of creativity, cunning, and financial acumen.

DID YOU MISS

John A. McAllister's Civil War: The Philadelphia Home Front
in our gallery? View the online exhibition here: http://www.librarycompany.org/mcallisterexhibition

"John A. McAllister's Civil War: The Philadelphia Home Front" is the Library Company's principal effort to commemorate the American Civil War and draws on our extraordinary collection of material gathered by one of the most important antiquarians of the 19th century.  McAllister voraciously collected several thousand broadsides, leaflets, handbills, pamphlets, recruiting posters, photographs, and epehmera that comprise a veritable documentary history of Philadelphia at war.The exhibition will touch on military recruitment; political campaigns; balls, benefits, theaters, and social life; support groups like the Union League, the Cooper Shop Volunteer Refreshment Saloon, and the Sanitary Commission and Great Central Fair; hospitals; and other examples of municipal engagement in support of (and sometimes in opposition to) the Union cause to present a comprehensive picture of the war years in Philadelphia.