Essay on Our Benjamin Bradley Bindings

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Frocks and Frills: Children’s Fashion at the Turn of the 20th Century

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Marriott C. Morris took this photograph of his son, Marriott Jr., in 1903 outside their house on Cresheim Road in the Mt. Airy neighborhood.  Young Marriott’s attire was typical for a boy of three at the time: skirted sailor suit, long…

Preserving the Legacy of the Pennsylvania Railroad

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The following is a guest post by Michael Froio who is a professional photographer, associate professor and facilities manager for the Photography Program, part of the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at Drexel University…

Keeping the Highways and Byways Safe

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In 1906 the Keystone Automobile Club was established, and fifteen years later became affiliated with the newly formed National Motorists' Association, a group promoting national standards for roads, pedestrian and motorist safety, as well as…

Behind the Scenes

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As a visitor to the Library Company, you might see any of the thousands of objects in our collection in a variety of ways.  You could view prints, pamphlets, and paintings as part of an exhibition in the gallery, study rare books in the reading…

2nd Annual Library Company Lecture in Honor of John Van Horne

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On April 8, Library Company members will gather at the Union League of Philadelphia for the 2nd Annual Library Company Lecture in Honor of John Van Horne. The annual series honors the former Library Company director who served for over 29 years…

Teacher’s Guide to The Genius of Freedom

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Although exhibitions rotate through our Louise Lux-Sions and Harry Sions Gallery, many find new lives as online exhibitions. K-12 teachers reference and utilize these online resources, and to encourage further classroom use, we are creating…

Library Company Shows Off its German-American Folk Art

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As part of Philadelphia’s three-month long celebration Framing Fraktur, the Library Company has a small selection of our printed and manuscript fraktur on exhibition through May 22, 2015. From birth certificates to bookplates, these…

Digital Humanities Outreach: Turning Library Records into Data Workshop

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One of the hallmarks of the Digital Humanities is collaborative education and outreach. The Library Company continues to work with digital managers and support staff among area colleges, cultural organizations and museums. This past December…

Love is in the Air

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Perhaps as a distraction from yet another month of winter weather, turning the calendars to February focuses some of our thoughts on Valentine’s Day and romance. While we are all familiar with today’s ubiquitous visual records of weddings,…

Down the Shore with Marriott C. Morris

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About seven miles north of Avocado, the Morris family shore house located in Sea Girt, New Jersey, is the small town of Ocean Grove.  Founded in 1869 by a group of devout Methodists as a permanent camp meeting location, Ocean Grove became a…

A New View of an Old Graveyard

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A wide variety of projects have resulted from readers using our historical collections. Occasionally we like to feature them in our blog. In late 2014 I had the pleasure to meet Ronald Shaffer, who among his many activities serves as the president…

Open Saturdays

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To celebrate the popularity of our current exhibition “Genius of Freedom:  Northern Black Activism and Uplift after the Civil War” and to make it possible for more people to visit our gallery, the Library Company will be open from 10…

Gutekunst Album Gift

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In December, the Greer family gave the Library Company an oversized album of 19th century photos taken by Frederick Gutekunst. A native of Germantown, Gutekunst was a celebrated post-bellum photographer whose subjects included Walt Whitman,…

February 28 Teachers Workshop

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The Library Company is pleased to partner with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania for a teachers workshop that examines African American agency in procuring equal rights and freedom before and after the Civil War. First, teachers will…

Guide to the Stranger Gets Noticed

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When Wendy Woloson, guest curator of the Library Company’s 2012 Capitalism by Gaslight exhibition, selected an 1849 guidebook to Philadelphia’s seamy underbelly—A Guide to the Stranger—to exhibit, she may not have realized how much…

LCP Demand in Cyberspace

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Partnerships with a range of online publications are giving the Library Company’s collections and curatorial insights new visibility. The Print Department’s charming and informative blog posts began to reach an audience of a whole new…

WWI Graphics on ImPAC

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On the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand this June, a consortium of archival institutions in the Delaware Valley launched "Home Before the Leaves Fall:  The Great War," a digital resource highlighting little-known…

Over There, Over Everywhere: The Aero Service Collection at the Library Company of Philadelphia

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The following post is by guest blogger Carl H. Winnefeld, Jr. who is mining our Aero Service Collection looking for photographs of company personnel and aircraft.  A former Aero Service employee, Winnefeld and colleagues are compiling…

Word Pictures

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The Morris Collection keeps on growing!  David Marriott Morris, Eleanor Rhoads Morris Cox and William Perot Morris recently added to the Library Company’s holdings of over 1600 of their grandfather’s photographs with a gift of travel journals…