February 14, 2017 – The Powel House

The Powel House was the residence of Samuel Powel, the last colonial and first post-colonial mayor of Philadelphia, and his with Elizabeth. The Powel home saw much activity during the American Revolution, hosting many prominent figures of the time, such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin’s family, and the Marquis de Lafayette, and being commandeered by British forces during their occupation of Philadelphia. In the second half of the 19^th century, the building was turned into a commercial property. By 1930, it was set to be demolished, with the interior of one of the upstairs rooms having been removed in its entirety and sent to the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the ballroom, significant for the guests who had once danced there, sent to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Wealthy Philadelphian Frances Wister stepped in and bought the home, forming the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks (PhilaLandmarks) with the mission of saving and restoring homes of historically significant people to how they looked during the person’s lifetime. Today the house is still held by PhilaLandmarks, which also maintains three other house museums in Southeast Pennsylvania. 

Frances Wister’s efforts with the Powel House highlight two interesting subtopics topics in the field of historic preservation. The first is the use of restoration as a tool for historic preservation; the second is the role of the intersectionality in women’s historic preservation efforts.

In contemporary times, PhilaLandmarks, like many public history organizations, is interested in promoting ‘alternative narratives’, or narratives that focus on the experiences of lesser discussed people, particularly those with marginalized identities. This contrasts ‘traditional narratives’, or narratives that focus on certain figures in a subject’s history, such as in the case of Powel House: Samuel Powel. The name ‘alternative narratives’ is somewhat of a misnomer, as it is the ‘traditional narratives’ of the original preservationists that often deviated, or narrowed the scope of what is discussed, from the subject’s actual history. This is in part due to an exploitation of the limitations of restoring historic buildings. As it is uncommon to know the exact details of how a building looked prior to the invention of the camera, liberties could often be taken to allow a ‘restored’ building to stand as evidence for the restorer’s ideologically-based narratives. This not truly restoration, but in the case of the Powel House, and many other museums of its kind, true restoration was never the intended result. This was shown in Frances Wister’s decision to sell original parts of the House, such as its roof tiles, to finance the restoration process. Doing this was directly contradictory to the idea of true restoration, and spoke to the prioritization of presenting a certain image, not in showing the house as it had actually once been. 

As our society’s gender structure assigns the responsibilities of the home to women, it makes sense that Frances Wister cultivated house museums like the Powel House. It also makes sense as to why she, and other women like her, cenetered the narrative of their museums on the lives of old-money wealthy, white, Anglo-American men. Aside from this demographic being the classic prototype American we have always been taught to revere, placing the focus on this particular type of man allowed these women, many of whom came from the same background, to play out traditional gender roles. As preservationists, these women could present a narrative about American history that fostered virtue and patriotism in the public, much as a mother would in her child. They could also act out the dynamic between a mother, husband, and son – saving the noble heritage of the men of the past so that the men of the future would be inspired to carry on their legacy. What this legacy meant was dependent upon the views of the woman and the values of her time. In the case of Frances Wister and Powel house, the 1930s had been preceded by decades of mass immigration to America, and, due to the effects of the Great Depression, a steady increase in the already large lower class. In response, Wister restored Powel house as a symbol of classic American wealth and elitism. There was no trace of its existence as a factory warehouse, or acknowledgement of the servants, most of whom would have been woman, either enslaved or poor, who had lived and the worked there. There was no extensive mention of Elizabeth Powel, except if only to say she continued her husband’s legacy after his death. Like many other women in her position, Wister prioritized the protections of her privilege in immigrant status, class, and race above the marginalization of her gender.

On a final note, in one of the upstairs rooms of the Powel House, there is a cabinet filled with books from the 18^th and 19^th centuries. PhilaLandmarks’ executive director Jonathan Burton mentioned that he was interested in donating the books elsewhere, but had been met with resistance from those who wanted to keep them in the house. Being a library assistant at a historical society, I handle a lot of old books and pamphlets. Although many are low maintenance, a great deal of care goes into preserving them so that they are available for reading as long as possible. Seeing those books locked away in that cabinet felt like such as waste. Factoring in the display next to it, which featured what was described as a lock of George Washington’s hair and a piece of his coffin, it made the statement that knowledge was for the elite, and not for everyone. It was also symbolic of the divide in thoughts on museums such as the Powel house: are their contents better presented as relics to be admired and often meant to promote a specific ideology, or are they more valuable when visitors are able to interact and divine their own interpretations from them? I am of the latter opinion. After all, if the furniture and room interiors of the house can be removed and replicated, there is no reason those books cannot be as well.

February 2, 2017 – Wagner Free Institute of Science

The focus for this site visit was to consider how the Wagner Free Institute of Science functions in contemporary North Philadelphia, preserved in its original Victorian-era building design and organizational mission.

The Wagner Free Institute of Science was founded in 1855 by William Wagner, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant. Inspired by the philanthropic efforts of Stephen Girard and his own experiences visiting scientific institutions abroad, Wagner established the Institute with the purpose of providing access to education in the natural sciences to the public. After his death in 1885, the Institute came under the direction of biologist Joseph Leidy. Leidy emphasized research and field expeditions, which increased the number of specimens in the Institute’s collection. Going into the 1900s, the Institute expanded its educational outreach, beginning to hold science classes for children. Over a century later, the Institute functions largely as it did at the turn of the 20^th-century, providing free education in natural history to the public, with partnerships with other educational institutions in Philadelphia, including nearby Temple University.

The Institute has two levels that are open the visitors. On the ground floor, there is an auditorium and research library. The second floor houses the Institute’s natural history collection. The auditorium is arranged like a lecture hall, with rows of wooden seats facing towards the front of the room where presentations and lectures are given. In the gallery on the second floor, the Institute’s collection of minerals, fossils, insects, and small animals are held in table display cases. Dividing the room into quarters, there are glass cabinets filled with skeletons and taxidermied animal remains. The contents of one case were skulls of various animals, with a human skull in the center. In another case, there was a collection of primate skeletons, categorized by genus, ranging from gibbon to human. In the case next to it were taxidermied carnivores, featuring a bobcat with a mouse in its mouth. In the center of gallery stands a complete skeleton of a draft horse,

When the Wagner Free Institute of Science was established, displaying specimens in a life-like state was thought to be the most effective and engaging way to teach biology. These displays exposed average Philadelphians to creatures they would otherwise never encounter, such as the bobcat specimen. It also encouraged them to draw connections between creatures they were familiar with and those they were not. An example of this is the draft horse skeleton, a then common animal, which is displayed with a diagram comparing its joints to that of humans. Additionally, the display arrangements express the scientific theories of the time of the Institute’s founding, which involved Linnaean taxonomy and emerging Evolutionary theory, as shown in the primate display.

The Wagner Institute was one of many places that emerged during the Victorian era with the purpose of providing scientific and artistic education to the average member of the public. Now, it exists in a meta-state, as a museum of a museum. It remains as it originally intended to be, a place where everyone can come to learn about natural history. However, being preserved as it was at the turn of the 20^th-century, it is now also an example of how we previously viewed our world. This dual state not only signifies how our approach to natural science has evolved, but also our change in ethical perspective on how scientific study is done.

If the educational benefits that were derived from the specimens in the Institute’s collection are taught to visitors of today through other means, what is their purpose? Are they still educational because they help us understand historical perceptions, or do they just become objects of morbid curiosity? In either or both cases, is it okay to keep the remains of once living things, possibly collected through what we would not consider unscrupulous means, up for display? These are some of the questions the Wagner Free Institute inspires visitors to think about, and which in turn reminds them of the often forgotten progression of time between the past and present.

The Wagner Free Institute for Science Website

January 26, 2017 – Independence National Historical Park

The focus for this visit was to examine the development of and surrounding Independence Hall, particularly in relation to Charles Wilson Peale’s museum. 

Charles Wilson Peale, a prominent artist, established the ‘Philadelphia Museum’, considered the prototype of American museums, in the 1780s. Peale’s aspiration was to cultivate a cultural intelligence of art and science in all Americans, regardless of socio-economic class. Originally, the museum was housed in Philosophical Hall, the meetinghouse for the American Philosophical Society. The building is located directly to the right of the front of Independence Hall, now known as the Pennsylvania State House. The State House then hosted meetings of the national government, and by having his museum be so close to it, Peale was associating its holdings with American power and identity. Later, Peale’s museum relocated to the second floor of the State House, symbolizing a direct relationship between the knowledge of Peale’s museum with the governance that happened on the second floor. (This overlap was short lived, however, as the state and national government would both leave the city by the early 1800s. The museum was sold off after Peale’s death, and eventually closed.)

This taxonomy – organizing subjects in a way that conveys their importance relative to other subjects – was apparent in how Peale arranged his exhibits. Portraits and sculptures of the important persons of the time were place at the top of the walls, above rows of taxidermied wildlife. By doing this Peale conveyed the message that the people within the portraits (public officials, military officers, and others he thought distinguished) had dominated the land in its natural state. It also promoted to a sense of cultural refinement, and of reverence as visitors to the museum had look up to view them, making them submissive to the figure in the portrait. Peale was a believer in preserving what he considered the best of American. 

The layout of, and area surrounding, the section of Independence Nation Park where Independence Hall is located shows the same consideration Peale put into when finding a location for his museum. The center of this particular portion of the park is Independence Mall, a grassy area that spans three blocks. This area was created explicably with the purpose of framing Independence Hall, giving it a sense of gravitas appropriate for being the building where the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were adopted. To achieve this however, much 19^th-century residential and commercial real estate had to be destroyed. This promotes a sense of time-freezing, of presenting history as one or a few grand moments, in this instances literally erasing proof of further time progression.

The day of this on-site visit coincided with the Republican members of Congress, the Prime Minister of the UK, and the President and Vice-President attending a policy conference at a nearby hotel. Naturally, this caused an influx of security from all levels of federalism to be in and around the area. There is a certain feeling that comes from standing on the Mall, a space often used for both public celebration and protest, surrounded by Independence Hall, the National Constitution Center, the Jewish American History Museum, and the President’s House Memorial, with the loud buzzing of helicopters above you. What the feeling is varies dependent upon your political beliefs. For me, it was not a very good one.