Our places matter.
The built landscape of Erie and northwest Pennsylvania is a tangible expression of our richly layered social, cultural, and industrial history. Along with the natural landscape, it's the built environment that shapes our collective regional identity and sense of place.
Preservation Pennsylvania needs your support as we work to preserve and expand the Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Tax Credit, established in 2012. This important preservation tool will sunset in June 2020 unless it is reauthorized. Please contact your State House or Senate members immediately and ask them to become a co-sponsor of this bill. Your support is essential in this effort. Showing broad support of this bill will make it easier to get this moving toward passage. You can email them and follow up with a phone call if you have a personal relationship. Please feel free to craft your own emails to those who you want to share this with to ask for their support. It is most important for Representatives and Senators to hear from their own constituents.
Preserving Our Cemeteries
From urban areas dominated by skyscrapers to rolling rural vistas, graveyards can be found across the American landscape. Graveyards tell us much about the past; specifically, they can tell us about the people who have built the society in which we live today. Some of these graveyards are picturesque, while others are littered with weeds and half-broken headstones. Nonetheless, each graveyard and each grave tells a story worth preserving.
Saving the Moorhead House
Hollen Davinsizer, a student at Gannon University, interviewed Leanne Becker and her husband Russ, who, after purchasing the Moorhead House (on Route 20) in March 2014, began a multi-year renovation project. The house was built in 1837 by Joseph Moorhead. It was originally a hotel called the Temperance Tavern, and the family's primary residence. When Joseph passed in 1880, the house was sold to his great nephew Fredrick who undertook many renovations on the interior. The house was moved back about 50 feet and 40 feet west in 1907 due to a widening of the road. It took 2 summers to complete this process and was completed with only horses, mules and man-power; not one brick was cracked.
Taking stock of our treasures, one historic building at a time
Thanks to generous support from the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority, The Erie Community Foundation, the Perry 200 Commission, and individuals, Preservation Erie completed an unprecedented county-wide inventory of historic resources. Between December 2013 and May 2015, the consulting firm of Wise Preservation Planning identified, documented and mapped all historic resources and historic districts that are individually listed on, determined to be eligible for, or appear to be eligible for, the National Register of Historic Places.