Tag Archives: History News

Cigar Making in Philadelphia

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T&O Offices, 1900

National Hispanic Heritage Month is observed each year from September 15th to October 15th. During this month, the cultures and contribution of Americans whose ancestors come from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America are celebrated. It’s a good opportunity to highlight some materials from the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) that relate to one of the many Hispanic groups that make up the fabric of this country: Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia.

Like many immigrant groups, Puerto Ricans came to the area in search of employment opportunities. Starting slowly in the late 19th century, and accelerating through the 20th century, they immigrated to Philadelphia, a thriving industrial city.

T&O Cigar Making Floor, 1900

Among the many industries where they found employment was cigar manufacturing. For many years Philadelphia was one of the leading manufacturers of cigars in the United States. Consequently, some of Philadelphia’s Latino communities can trace their origins to enclaves that grew up around cigar factories in North Philadelphia neighborhoods.

T & O Cigar Banding Department, 1900

One such factory, located in the Northern Liberties neighborhood, was owned by the Theobald & Oppenheimer Cigar Company. Founded in 1860, the T & O Cigar Company was one of the largest cigar manufacturers in the city. In 1900, the company opened a new factory at 1147 North 4th Street. To memorialize this opening the company created an album, with over two dozen sepia-toned photographs of the offices, warehouse, factory floor, and workers, who hand-rolled the cigars. (The album was donated to the SCRC in 2012.)

T&O Cigar Factory Building, 1900

As Puerto Rican immigration to Philadelphia increased throughout the post-war years, organizations such as the Nationalities Service Center (established in 1921) began to respond to the needs of this group, as it had to previous waves of immigrants, by providing information, guidance, and services on such issues as housing, education, and employment. The programs and activities provided by the center were aimed at helping to ease the transition of living and working in a new place. A parallel goal of the center was to promote and conserve the cultural values of immigrant communities for the enrichment of American life. These efforts to aid the Puerto Rican immigrant community, as well as many other ethnic communities, are documented in the Records of the Nationalities Service Center, one of the collection in the SCRC’s Urban Archives.

-Josué Hurtado, Coordinator of Public Services & Outreach

Remembering 9/11/2001

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Out of the Sky: 9/11. Pear Whistle Press, Red Hook, NY, 2006.

In 2006, as a tribute to the World Trade Center victims on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, book artist Werner Pfeiffer created Out of the Sky: 9/11.   A constructed book, it consists of a series of segments, illustrated by woodcut images of falling victims and their names.  When assembled, the book represents a model of the World Trade Center and is over 5 feet tall.  As the book is deconstructed for storage, that action mirrors the falling of the towers.   The book includes Pfeiffer’s written reflections, colored by his childhood in World War II Germany and his memories of witnessing the towers’ collapse from Pratt Institute’s rooftop in Brooklyn.

Temple University Libraries’ Special Collection Research Center houses number 41 of the limited edition of 52.  View the book in Paley Library lobby on Friday, September 11, 2015.

See a youtube video of Pfeiffer discussing Out of the Sky, or read more about Pfeiffer in Jonathan Rinck’s International Sculpture Center blog.

Out of the Sky in Paley on September 11, 2015

 

 

From Camp Kennebec to Camp Firewood

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“The War Canoes” postcard, undated

In late July, Netflix released a much anticipated prequel to the quite literally campy cult classic Wet Hot American Summer which premiered in the U.S. in 2001.  The newly released series and the original movie both revolve around the often deviant misadventures of camp goers at a disorganized sleep-away camp in Maine called Camp Firewood. Both films are loosely based on the experiences their director, David Wain, had while attending a Jewish camp in Belgrade, Maine.

Established by three Jewish Philadelphians, Louis Fleischer, Charles Edwin Fox, and Milton Katzenberg, at the start of the twentieth century, Camp Kennebec was located in the scenic Kennebec County town, Belgrade. For almost a century, it catered to Jewish male youth ages 8 to 18, mainly hailing from Philly.

Kennebec Junior felt patch, undated

Camp Kennebec’s location and religious affiliation are likely the only similarities between it and David Wain’s camp memories. Kennebec was a no-nonsense kind of summer experience with few amenities. It was established to mold boys into “true men” during the tail end of the Progressive Era, when stoic masculinity was emphasized.

Camp Kennebec recruited counselors from Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania among other universities, and instructed campers to call each of them “uncle” (or the “uncs” as one camper affectionately noted in his photographic travel journal).  Kennebec’s primary emphasis was on the development of respectable traits such as masculinity, ruggedness, and independence. Kennebec’s campers engaged in athleticism, wilderness survival, and first aid, but also academic pursuits such as the study of literature. For many, the boyhood bonds formed at the camp and the lessons it taught them lasted well into adulthood.

Kennebecamper yearbook, 1978

A collection of records from Camp Kennebec and Kennebec alumni is available for research in Temple University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center. The collection includes yearbooks, souvenirs, photo albums of hiking trips, and ephemera relating to alumni reunions, which were no doubt well attended. To learn more about Camp Kennebec and the alumni collection, view the online finding aid.

-Irena Frumkin, SCRC Student Assistant

From the Archives: World War II Love Letters

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Jesse Lare letter, September 27, 1944

“No, I am not crazy for writing you twice in one day, just head over heels in love with you!”  Thus, the ever romantic, Master Sergeant Jesse Lare began his letter to Mildred Patterson of Fishtown, Philadelphia, on September 27, 1944. Jesse and Mildred had not known each other for very long. They met at a mutual friend’s house several months earlier, and their correspondence had begun in June, when Jesse first wrote to Mildred. They maintained a correspondence that lasted almost two years and led to their marriage.

Jesse, who was also from Philadelphia, was stationed in Memphis at Second Army Headquarters, and later, at Camp Shelby in Mississippi. He was serving in the Second Army, a training outfit that readied troops for combat and other army jobs. Mildred lived in Philadelphia, and worked at the Kensington National Bank.
From the start, they were dedicated pen pals, and they wrote with increased frequency as time went on. Through their letter writing, Mildred and Jesse shared in each other’s lives, including their relationship, their work, their friends and families, and their leisure. In his free time, Jesse liked to bowl, play golf, and go to the movies. Mildred liked to go to Wildwood and other towns along the Jersey Shore, and she frequently turned to the Ouija board for her fortune. They
told each other about the daily goings on of life, from progress in the war to activities in Philadelphia and at the army base, the weather, and their feelings. It is clear they were well-suited friends, and the romance that quickly developed was a natural next step.

Mildred accepts Jesse’s proposal, January 13, 1945

Having met in person only a few times, they married in January 1945. As a married couple, they maintained a candid correspondence in which they regularly discussed the ups and downs of their relationship and future together.

The Jesse and Mildred Lare Correspondence, 1944-1945, was donated to the Special Collections Research Center by Jesse and Mildred Lare’s daughter, in early 2015. This great World War II era collection has been processed and is available for research use! To learn more, check out the online finding aid.
– Courtney Smerz, Collection Management Archivist, SCRC

From the Philadelphia Jewish Archives: Hollywood Mysteries

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Scholars have long been interested in the cultural and socioeconomic conditions that led Jews to success in the early film industry. Jewish immigrants, and particularly those from Eastern Europe, were adept at developing film technology and skilled at writing, directing, and marketing movies. Even the moguls who created Hollywood’s studio system–William Fox, Samuel Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, and Adolph Zukor, among others–were Jewish immigrants who rose from unprepossessing circumstances to become some of the most powerful men in the country. In books, articles, and documentaries, historians and film buffs have attempted to explain this unique aspect of film history.

What’s been less well-studied, however, is the relationship between Hollywood and Philadelphia’s own rich Jewish history. And I must admit that I’ve never given it much thought either, despite being a Philadelphia Jewish Archives collections project archivist in the Special Collections Research Center and classic film enthusiast. That changed, however, after I discovered an intriguing letter in the Robert B. Wolf and Morris Wolf Papers.

Robert and his father, Morris, were prominent members of the Philadelphia Jewish community. Morris served with the American Red Cross during World War I and was stationed in Paris. It was among his letters from France that I came across a curious passage:

Letter to Edwin Wolf, December 1918.

Dated December 26, 1918, the letter is addressed to Morris’ father, Edwin. “Dear Father:” Morris wrote, “I made my first visit to a moving picture house last evening….There was a picture of Gaby Deslys’s, which I thought was very good. It seems to me that Goldwyn would make a tremendous hit by trying to get say five pictures a year with this star for the United States.” He later reminded, “I suggest that you speak to Goldwyn about it.”

Call me crazy, but was Morris Wolf referring to THE Sam Goldwyn? The famous producer of dozens of classic American films? If he was, then what was the connection between the Wolf family and the Hollywood film industry?

A search of the collection produced more hints, but frustratingly few answers. I found an employment contract for First National Pictures, a film company that merged with Warner Bros. in 1928. The collection also includes a 1959 Philadelphia Inquirer article that mentions that the family starred in and produced Westerns at a Montgomery County motion picture studio (Betzwood, anyone?)

Hoping to find more information, I turned to secondary sources. To my surprise, I found that little has been written about Philadelphia Jews and their role in the national film industry. To be sure, Siegmund Lubin’s career has been well documented, but there are significant gaps in the literature on this subject.

So, if anyone out there decides to tackle this topic, Morris Wolf and I will be eagerly awaiting your findings. Until then, feel free to use the Robert B. Wolf and Morris Wolf Papers and take a stab at unravelling the mystery yourself….

— Jenna Marrone, SCRC Project Archivist

Photograph of Morris Wolf in uniform, 1918

Digital Forensics

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Examples of 5.25” and 3.5” floppy disks from SCRC collections.

Readers of our blog and web site are well aware that the Special Collections Research Center contains many varied types of historical materials. We are proud stewards of published books, letters, administrative records, photographs, film, audio recordings, artists’ books, fanzines, and many other formats. We also actively collect materials in digital form: word processed documents, digital photos and videos, spreadsheets, etc. As archivists and librarians responsible for preserving the historic record, we are well aware that for the past few decades the historic record has increasingly been created via computer.

The SCRC has started testing use of the KryoFlux, a small device that attaches to floppy disk drives to read disks in almost any data format.

Computer technology evolves quickly, and while it is one (still challenging) thing to download recently created files and preserve them, it’s another to be confronted with a box of obsolete disks last used ten or twenty years ago. Paper documents hundreds of years old can still be read if you understand the language, but computer disks require compatible hardware and software to render their contents readable. What’s an archivist to do?

FTK Imager displaying information from disk images of two 3.5” floppy disks.

The answer has emerged from unlikely sources. Computer forensics is used by police and other law enforcement officials to gather and preserve computer files which may be used as evidence in a court of law. Like archivists, law enforcement officials must be sure to preserve documents without altering or damaging them–in the case of law enforcement, for evidential use, and, for archivists, to preserve the historic record. Officials involved in computer forensics have created software that enables that to happen. Meanwhile, classic video game fans have created hardware that allows them to read, copy, and play games created on much older computer systems–and often stored on floppy disks.

The SCRC–and many other special collections and archives departments–has begun to create best practices using this hardware and software to care for digital materials in our collections. At Temple, we have used the FC5025 by Device Side Data to read and copy the contents of 5.25” floppy disks, and we have started testing the Kryoflux, developed by the Software Preservation Society, with 3.5” floppy disks. In both cases, this forensic hardware has been able to read disks that other drives were unable to read. We have also used FTK Imager by AccessData to extract access copies of files for use by our patrons in our reading room, just as they would use our paper collections. Digital forensics is a growing area of archival work, and an exciting new area of exploration. We look forward to sharing our old disks with you.

–Katy Rawdon, Coordinator of Technical Services, SCRC

Walter Massey Phillips, Philadelphia Renaissance Man

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Page from a notebook kept by Walter Massey Phillips recording tugboats seen on the Delaware River, 1920s. Walter Massey Phillips Papers, SCRC 136, Special Collections Research Center.

Walter M. Phillips, Sr. (1912-1985) was active in Philadelphia civic affairs for more than thirty years, particularly during the period of the 1940s-1960s, which was known as the “Philadelphia Renaissance.” During this time, political organizers worked for reform of what was seen as an immensely corrupt city government. While Phillips was an enormous political presence behind the scenes, he never held a political office, and by all accounts his reticent personality kept his significant role in the Philadelphia reform movement from wider renown. However, noted architect and city planner Edmund Bacon once called Phillips “the greatest single figure in the renaissance.”

A graduate of Episcopal Academy, Princeton, and Harvard Law School, Phillips was a chief organizer of the City Policy Committee, President of the Citizens’ Council on City Planning, Board Member of the Greater Philadelphia Movement, President of the Philadelphia Housing Association, Executive Secretary with the Delaware River Basin Advisory Committee, Trustee of Lincoln University, Director of the Honey Hollow Watershed Association, and Board Member of the Committee of Seventy. He managed Joseph Clark’s successful race for Mayor of Philadelphia in 1951, served in Clark’s cabinet as City Representative and Director of Commerce through 1955, and was the (unsuccessful) reform candidate against Mayor James Tate in the 1963 Democratic primary election.

Walter Massey Phillips during the 1963 mayoral race, May 1963. Walter Massey Phillips Papers, SCRC 136, Special Collections Research Center

After retiring, Phillips initiated an oral history project, and, between 1974 and 1980, interviewed approximately 160 of the local civic and government leaders with whom he had worked. The interviews generally discuss Philadelphia city government and history between the late 1930s and the 1970s.

The Special Collections Research Center holds  Phillips’ personal papers as well as cassette tapes, transcripts (many of which are now available online), and background information from his oral history project. His papers document his life, career, and the nature of civic decision making at the policy level in mid-twentieth century Philadelphia. In addition to records from and related to the many Philadelphia organizations and networks in which Phillips was involved, there are also personal items, such as family photos and a diary of Phillips’ 1936 trip to the Yukon.

–Katy Rawdon, Coordinator of Technical Services, SCRC

Franklin H. Littell Papers open for research

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The Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) at Temple University Libraries is pleased to announce that the Franklin H. Littell collection is open and available for research.

View the finding aid on the Libraries’ website, along with portions of the papers which have been digitized.  Dr. Littell’s extensive library is cataloged and is available for use along with the papers in the SCRC reading room on the Ground Floor of Paley Library.

Franklin Littell (1917-2009), emeritus professor of religion at Temple University, led a distinguished career that spanned more than seventy years. He was a pacifist and activist, proponent of the Christian Laity and an advocate for new religious movements, an historian, political commentator and supporter of the State of Israel. He devoted ten years to work with the Protestant Churches and Laity in US-occupied Germany and more than fifty years to the study and remembrance of the Holocaust and German Church Struggle. He career is marked by strong beliefs in interfaith understanding and religious liberty.

The Littell and Sachs families donated Dr. Littell’s papers and library to Temple in 2010, where they were the focus of a three-year cataloging and processing project. Processing of the collection was funded through a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc., and generous support from Norman Braman.

Science Fiction Manuscripts in the Libraries: Three Examples

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“The Planet of Doubt” by Stanley G. Weinbaum, published in Astounding Stories, October 1935.

Recently, a reference request came in through the Special Collections Research Center general email, asking for information about three of our science fiction manuscript collections: the Stanley G. Weinbaum Papers, the Lloyd Arthur Eshbach Papers and Fantasy Press Archives, and the Arthur Leo Zagat Manuscripts. While the Weinbaum papers already had a finding aid on our web site, it needed revision.  The Eshbach and Zagat collections had finding aids in electronic format, but they had not yet made it onto our web site.

Photograph of Stanley G. Weinbaum, undated.

We call these “legacy finding aids” – finding aids written some years ago, that likely do not meet current archival structures and standards, and which require some revision before we can make them available online. Working through these finding aids and posting them to our web site is an often lengthy process, but a satisfying one in that it greatly increases awareness of the collections in question.

The Paskow Science Fiction Collection within the SCRC is perhaps best known for its extensive holdings of science fiction and fantasy books. In addition to multiple editions of primarily 20th century books, the collection contains pulp magazines, general and Star Trek/Klingon-related fanzines, posters, fliers, and convention ephemera.

Less well known is the fact that the science fiction collection also contains manuscript materials.  The papers of Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, Tom Purdom, John Varley, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Felix Gotschalk, Arthur Leo Zagat, the Enterprising Women Fan Fiction Collection, and the Arthur Langley Searles Collection of H. P. Lovecraft Research Files are a few of the gems found in the collection.

Letter from Wonder Stories to Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, January 27, 1931.

The Weinbaum, Eshbach, and Zagat collections all contain a mix of manuscripts of published and unpublished short stories and novels, and correspondence with editors, agents, publishers, and authors. Much of the material is from the 1930s and 1940s, and provides a glimpse into that era of science fiction writing and publishing, particular in the pulp magazine area.

First page of a corrected typescript for Lloyd Arthur Eshbach’s story, “The Beast-Men.”

SCRC staff are working to verify existing inventories, update and standardize the format of finding aids, and prepare our collections for research use. The Weinbaum, Eshbach, and Zagat papers are three such collections that are now ready and waiting for interested researchers to visit the SCRC and discover their amazing content.

–Katy Rawdon, Coordinator of Technical Services, SCRC

Occupy Philadelphia Archives

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In September 2011, Occupy Wall Street began its protest in New York’s City’s Zuccotti Park, and quickly gained widespread popular attention.  As a protest movement against economic and social inequality and corporate greed, the group touched a nerve with people worldwide affected by the economic crisis. By October of 2011, Occupy groups existed in over 80 countries, although the majority were located in the United States.

Best known for its extensive and elaborate camp at Dilworth Plaza, adjacent to City Hall, Occupy Philadelphia was largely composed of nonviolent protests, organized marches, and demonstrations.  In November 2011, Philadelphia city officials informed Occupy protesters of the impending renovations scheduled to begin at Dilworth Plaza later that the month and asked Occupy Philadelphia to relocate.  They refused, and Philadelphia Police evicted them on November 30, 2011.

Occupy members, archivists, and other interested groups have tried since 2011 to document the movement and collect historical evidence related to the many Occupy groups. Because of its decentralized and non-authoritarian nature, this has proved enormously difficult. The digital nature of many Occupy materials have also caused difficulties in preserving and making available records of the movement. Emory Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Commons has collected over ten million tweets from the Occupy Wall Street group for data analysis, and WBAI radio station in New York has preserved and made accessible audio files related to the group. A 2012 New York Times article detailed efforts to collect records associated with the Occupy Wall Street, while Harvard collected and created a finding aid for records of the Occupy Harvard group.

The Special Collections Research Center received materials in physical and digital form from the Occupy Philadelphia group. The Occupy Philadelphia Records  include organizational records, fliers and ephemera, song and chant lyrics, journals and newspapers, clippings, and digital materials including photographs and videos, documenting the Occupy Philadelphia movement as well as other Occupy and protest movements. Much of the material is graphically striking, and expresses the tone and message of the movement in artistic and eye-catching ways. Both the physical and the digital materials can be viewed in the SCRC reading room. An advance appointment is recommended for viewing digital files.

–Katy Rawdon, Coordinator of Technical Services, SCRC