A guide book of art, architecture, and historic interests in Pennsylvania
History
A guide book of art, architecture, and historic interests in Pennsylvania
Architecture -- Pennsylvania; Art -- Pennsylvania; Historic buildings -- Pennsylvania; Pennsylvania -- Guidebooks; Pennsylvania -- History
County seat, LANCASTER, 418 feet above sea, population 53,150; laid out
by Governor Gordon in 1730; near by is the Conestoga River, named by
Conestoga Indians, a tribe of the Delawares; the Dutch who lived here
invented the wagon, with big covered tops, drawn by six horses, and
named it for the river. It is said that here was first given to
Washington the title “Des Landes Vater.” This is a square city, lines
run north and south, east and west, with outlying districts; one,
Rossmere, was named in honor of George Ross, a signer of the Declaration
of Independence.
The Continental Congress arrived here from Philadelphia the very day Sir
William Howe entered that city; the next day they moved to York. This
was the Capital of the State from 1799-1812, and birthplace of Simon
Snyder, Governor of Pennsylvania 1808-1817. In center of Penn Square is
a monument to soldiers and sailors of the Civil War. One block away is
the court house, on East King Street, built about 1850; architect,
Samuel Sloan; Corinthian; contains portraits of Hon. Isaac E. Hiester by
Isaac Williams, and Hon. W. U. Hensel by Lazare Raditz, Philadelphia.
Jail, East King Street, Norman castellated, red sandstone, built, 1850,
architect, John Haviland. Fountain, East King Street, on reservoir
grounds, made, 1905, memorial to John Williamson Nevin; bronze lion,
sculptor, Blanche Nevin.
Michael Schlatter and Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, leaders of the Reformed
and Lutheran Germans, were in favor of higher education, and established
Franklin College in 1787, forming the beginning of Franklin and Marshall
College; built on an eminence west of city; main building Elizabethan,
brick, built, 1854-55, with beautiful entrance door, contains portraits.
In the Watts de Peyster Library are bronze busts of the father and
mother of General de Peyster. St. Stephen’s Chapel has memorial window
to Rev. John W. Nevin, D.D., LL.D., made by Armstrong, New York. On the
campus is bronze heroic statue of Abraham de Peyster, made in New York,
1895, replica of one facing New York Custom House. The
[Illustration: MAIN BUILDING FRANKLIN AND MARSHALL COLLEGE, LANCASTER]
scientific building contains oil paintings, among them one by J. D.
Wiltkamp, “The Three Women of Grève-Coeur.” Buchanan Park, opened, 1905,
joins the college campus and grounds of the Reformed Theological
Seminary. “Wheatland,” residence of President James Buchanan, is near,
on Marietta Pike, colonial, brick, built prior to 1812. St. Joseph’s
Hospital and Roman Catholic Church are near college; hospital contains
portrait of Henry E. Muhlenberg, M.D., by Caroline Peart Brinton; the
church windows are from Munich and Innspruck.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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