Join the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) for its FREE #SummerBookChats as local authors Kathryn Wilson and Elizabeth Milroy discuss their recent works on Philadelphia history. The programs are free but registration is required.

Ethnic Renewal in Philadelphia’s Chinatown

Wednesday May 18 | 6-7:30 p.m.

Philadelphia’s Chinatown, like many urban Chinatowns, began in the late nineteenth century as a refuge for immigrant laborers and merchants in which to form a community to raise families and conduct business. But this enclave for expression, identity, and community is also the embodiment of historical legacies and personal and collective memories. In "Ethnic Renewal in Philadelphia’s Chinatown," Dr. Kathryn Wilson chronicles the community’s efforts to save and renew itself through urban planning, territorial claims, and culturally specific rebuilding. This discussion will also feature community leaders Mary Yee of the Save Chinatown movement and John Chin of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation.

This program is FREE but registration is required.

The Chinatown-themed issue of Pennsylvania Legacies is now FREE to read online in the run up to the event. The issue includes articles by each of the featured speakers. Click here to read. 

Image: Photograph of Chinese school children leading parade in Chinatown to celebrate the 26th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Republic, c. 1937.

Counting Trees: The Search for Fairmount Park

Wednesday June 15 | 6-7 p.m.

Philadelphia boasts one of the oldest, largest and most diverse park systems in the United States. Yet the city’s parks receive scant attention in histories of landscape design and city planning. In “Counting Trees: The Search for Fairmount Park,” Elizabeth Milroy, author of The Grid and the River: Philadelphia’s Green Places, 1682-1876, will describe the development of Philadelphia’s urban parks in the two centuries after William Penn and Thomas Holme drew public squares on the seminal city plan.

This program is FREE but registration is required.

Image: Detail from a watercolor landscape of Fairmount Park by David J. Kennedy.