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The mission of the Library Company is to preserve, interpret, make available, and augment the valuable materials in our care. We serve a diverse constituency throughout Philadelphia and internationally, offering comprehensive reader services, an internationally renowned fellowship program, online catalogs, and regular exhibitions and public programs. This podcast features our public programs.
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Contemporary Photographs in Response to the Historic Works of William H. Rau Michael Froio Thursday, March7, 2013 This lecture by Michael Froio looks at W. H.Rau's 1890s photographs of the Pennsylvania Railroad and explores theirimportance to his project to photographically document the former PRR MainLine. Froio also investigates the importance of…
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(October 17, 2011) Audio Download (MP3) - Program Adobe PDF Document - Slides Carol Soltis, Library Company Trustee and Curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Center for American Art, will discuss the work of the artist James Peale, focusing on our recently-acquired portraits of Zachariah and Susannah Knorr Poulson. Co-sponsored by the Center …
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Audio Tour of "“Building a City of the Dead: The Creation and Expansion of Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery” by Curator Aaron Wunsch
Laurel Hill Cemetery is among the most celebrated – and most densely populated – swaths of Greater Philadelphia. Beneath seventy-eight acres of lawn, trees, and monuments lie some 70,000 bodies – a sprawling and silent subdivision that took shape over nearly two centuries. Today's expanses of stone and sod testify to the success of the original vis…
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(June 21, 2010) Audio Download (MP3) - Main Program Audio Download (MP3) - Audience Discussion The Library Company commemorated Juneteenth on June 21, 2010 with a panel discussion on the past eight years of controversy surrounding the discovery of the slave quarters and the nine slaves who served President George Washington at his Philadelphia home…
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(June 19, 2009) Audio Download (MP3) This Juneteenth Freedom Forum event featured three area scholars discussing the African American struggle for freedom in the era of the Civil War and beyond. Dr. Robert Francis Engs, Professor of History (retired) University of Pennsylvania, “Who Freed the Slaves? The black Revolutionary Struggle for Freedom.” D…
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(May 12, 2009) Audio Download (MP3)By The Library Company of Philadelphia
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(May 12, 2009) Audio Download (MP3) Watch Video Online (FLV) - with corresponding slides. Kenneth Finkel, Distinguished Lecturer in Temple University’s American Studies Program and former Library Company Curator of Prints and Photographs, presents a talk with slides entitled “Same Old or New Old? Twenty-first Century Thinking About Nineteenth-Centu…
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(April 15, 2009) Audio Download (MP3) Corresponding Slides (PDF) Elizabeth P. McLean, garden historian and Library Company Trustee (and former President), speaks about her new biography of Peter Collinson, co-authored by Jean O’Neill. Collinson -- a London Quaker, a draper by trade, and a passionate gardener and naturalist by avocation -- was a fac…
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(March 19, 2009) Audio Download (MP3) Author Marc Egnal challenges the orthodoxy that the Civil War began for moral reasons, contending that more than any other concern, the evolution of the Northern and Southern economies explains the sectional clash. Egnal is Professor of History at York University and the author of several books, including A Mig…
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(March 11, 2009) Audio Download (MP3) An evening event in the spirit of Martha Washington! As part of the Library Company's Visual Culture Program, Curator of Women's History Cornelia King brings to lfe the women depicted in Daniel Huntington's painting The Republican Court; or, Lady Washington's Reception Day (1861). The group portrait includes Ma…
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(February 19, 2009) Audio Download (MP3) An intriguing glance into the world of Philadelphia Gothic literature, where writers such as Charles Brockden Brown, George Lippard, Robert Montgomery Bird, and Edgar Allan Poe flourished. Ed Pettit, a freelance writer, book reviewer and literary provocateur, will examine the connections these writers had wi…
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(February 5, 2009) Audio Download (MP3) In celebration of Black History Month, the Library Company’s Program in African American History and the University of Pennsylvania Press present Maurice Jackson, Assistant Professor of History at Georgetown University, to discuss his new biography of the man who led Quaker antislavery sentiment into a broad-…
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(October 29, 2008) Audio Download (MP3) In the first half of the 19th century, Philadelphia spawned a literary tradition of Lurid Crime, Weird Hallucination, Brooding Supernatural, and Sheer Horror - largely the work of three forgotten novelists. This exhibition resuscitates Charles Brockden Brown, Robert Montgomery Bird, and George Lippard through…
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(October 14, 2008) Audio Download (MP3) John Woolman (1720-1772), a Quaker tailor from New Jersey, had an extraordinary commitment to attaining self-purification through the rejection of slavery, war taxes, and rampant consumerism. Though not a famous politician, his persuasive ideals influenced the likes of fellow Quakers, social reformers, labor …
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