York Town Square

Linked in/Neat stuff: Dallastown studies Underground Railroad/Bonham painting at National Gallery

You could say they don’t make bridges like they used to. Spans like the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge, built in 1930 and christened the Veterans Memorial Bridge, are architectural showpieces. Their replacement spans often are, well, just boring. Consider this photo of the Veterans Memorial Bridge over the Susquehanna River, for example. The York, Pa., Daily Record gathered in this scene. How often do you see the Wright’s Ferry Bridge, constructed 40 years later, in photos? OK, it’s just a one-bridge sample, but quality-of-life advocates would say that infrastructure should add to experience, not detract from it. Here are several posts, with photos, of the Veterans Memorial Bridge. You can see how often the bridge is attracts photographers. Also of interest: A wide-angle look at the mile-long Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge.

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Other neat stuff from all over … .

We’ve met Tom Melhorn, teacher of local history at Dallastown Area High School, before.

Now his class has put online a Underground Railroad project. It’s a work in progress, Tom wrote, but he’s proud of what his students came up with.

“Our class does understand that most Underground Railroad journeys would not be so complicated and that a fugitive slave may only stop at one of the York County locations, but this works fairly well as a learning tool for our local sites,” he wrote.

So check out how these budding historians have interpreted the Underground Railroad.

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Now this: New at the National Gallery …

Horace Bonham was one of York County’s most prominent painters in the 1800s. His painting, ‘Nearing the Issue at the Cockpit,’ has been at the Corcoran in Washington, D.C., for years. Now with the Corcoran’s closure, the National Gallery of Art has acquired it. That information comes from York County artist Rob Evans, whose work has also been acquired by the National Gallery. He provided this from the list of acquisitions: ‘Horace Bonham, Nearing the Issue at the Cockpit, 1879, oil on canvas, framed: 25 3/4 x 32 3/8 x 2 7/8 in. (65.4 x 82.2 x 7.3 cm), Unframed: 20 1/8 x 27 in. (51.1 x 68.6 cm), National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Collection (Museum purchase, GalleryFund).’ Here is more about Bonham’s work.

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Grand History Loop: Don Gogniat is he former head of Penn State York, and he has the world’s most interesting retirement project. He’s the mind behind the Grand History Trail, the combination of rail trails to form a loop from York in the north to Annapolis, Md., in the south and Frederick, Md., to the west. Loosely described. Of course, there are gaps. Well, Don has a blog going of developments about the loop: Grand History Trail.
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Cliff Satterthwaite gives the outside-in view of the reading room at Martin Library in 1959. Interestingly, even if the artist had not inscribed ‘library’ at bottom of the artwork, you could tell the location. The read room just has a look – a good look, that holds up to today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

History Mystery: Go ahead, take a guess: