Things I’ve Learned From the Free Library of Philadelphia Art Department’s Archival Research Collection

There was a huge fire in the primate house of the Philadelphia Zoo on Christmas Eve of 1995. Twenty-three primates, including a prized family of gorillas, died of smoke inhalation. At the time the tragedy was considered the worst zoo accident in US history, though I’m not sure if that remains true today.

The Adelphia Building, where my friend once lived, used to be a hotel.

Philadelphia’s Art Commission is or was notorious for rejecting pretty much every proposed work of public art.

At some point in time there were things called the Transitrons somewhere on Chestnut Street. They looked like futuristic traffic lights and I don't know what purpose they served. Apparently when I originally wrote this I had found a folder about them but the folder did not contain a lot of information.

There is a tradition in the construction industry of attaching an American flag and an evergreen tree onto the final beam of a building.

The Sameric Theater was saved. That's all I wrote at the time and I don't remember where I was going with this but my understanding is that the theater was slated to be destroyed and people protested until it was saved.

I want to go see Emanuel’s Court and try to understand why a three-story glass wall was proposed to be built inside the building, and if the wall was ever built. Seriously: not one article questions the design of a giant glass wall in a church?

I later found that the glass wall was in fact built and one article calls it “the most radical aspect of the conversion” and “unavoidably overwhelming.” In a Philadelphia Inquirer article from September 17, 1989, E. Vider said of the wall: “But you can’t put a three-story glass wall into a Gothic stone church without its being noticeable.”

I want to know if the exhibit of corn still exists (from an annual report for the year 1911, found in a folder titled "Phila Museums").

I want to visit the Clarkson-Watson house: I wonder if it still exists. Now it’s the Germantown Historical Society? Interesting: “While most costumes in museums are wedding and formal dresses, Clarkson-Watson has an 1880’s kitchen to use as a backdrop and, what is most unusual, housedresses of the period are displayed there. Since housedresses usually end up as dusting cloths, they are harder to come by than fine clothes.”

The Please Take Museum is basically my art supply lending idea that I came up with in college.

It seems there is controversy literally every time a new building is proposed in Philadelphia.

I want to know if Willard G. Rouse ever got what was coming to him for relocating all those businesses and not paying them as he had promised.

1999 is when area codes became required for local calls.

People ruin everything good: Park employees were living rent-free in the historic houses of Fairmount Park, under an agreement that they'd guard and maintain the houses, until an article was published about it in the Daily News in 1977. The article is cited as a potential cause for the vandalism and fires that occurred while the houses were still occupied (In Fairmount Park, Heritage Crumbles. Philadelphia Inquirer. May 11, 1986). I guess people were angry that the houses' caretakers were living rent-free. Why did they care? It was a good situation and after the caretakers were forced to leave, the houses started falling apart because nobody could afford to maintain them. What a shame.