No April's Fool joke:  HSP just launched a new website resource that will be an excellent teaching tool for anyone covering the Depression.  Closed for Business features over 300 primary source documents relating to a bank closure in Philadelphia during that period. These documents have been transcribed and annotated so that you and students can learn more detail about the people, places, and events described within.  Essays by historians, such as Philadelphia and the Great Depression, 1929-1941 by Lehigh University history professor Roger D. Simon, provide context.  And a special For Educators section suggests how to incorporate the sources into lesson plans.

Please let us know what else you would like in the Educator section.

Closed for Business was a multi-year, grant-funded digital history project by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania that tells the story of Bankers Trust Company, the first large bank to fail in Philadelphia during the Great Depression.