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President's
House
(2002-present)
New scholarship on the Philadelphia house where
Washington and Adams once lived as president from 1790-1800 exposed the
rich story of the creation of the Executive Branch as well as
Washington's dependence upon enslaved labor in the very cradle of
American liberty.
Continuing efforts by scholars, citizens, and public
officials secured
updated interpretive exhibits in the Liberty Bell Center in 2003.
In
2005, the US Congress appropriated $3.5 million to construct an
installation at the President's House that honors the whole of its
complex story. The city of Philadelphia is overseeing a publich
design
process for that installation. The target date for unveiling in
July
4, 2007.
MARCH's work on this project has involved interpreting
for both scholars and public historians the challenges that arise from
the public hunger for a fair, full, and trustworthy national history.
more on
President's House
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Bethlehem Steel Interpretation (2003-to the present)
The last fully-integrated steel mill left in the United States stands abandoned on 160 acres of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania's south side. By late 2003, corporate bankrupty had stalled efforts to save the historic buildings. Despite scattered and passionate citizen efforts to defend the site, the city seemed ready to support a developer likely to demolish the old structures and build a mall.
MARCH intervened with the various citizens groups, helping them in March 2004 to craft a unified vision for the site, a unity of purpose that induced the city's political leaders to listen. With urging also from statewide and national organizations, inlcuding the National Council of Mayors and National Trust for Historic Preservation, the city changed directions.
The historic structures are now considered Bethlehem's best resource for economic development, and plans are in place to sensitively adapt them to new mixed uses.
Telling the central story of industry in the Mid-Atlantic region challenges scholars and preservationists to work innovatively with developers, elected officials, and community groups in order to succeed. Closed industrial plants represent economic activity that communities urgently want to see revived. These sites are also usually enormous and often toxic. MARCH has been egan working with a coalition of stakeholders for five years to show how a successful combination of industrial history and economic revitalization could work, using the abandoned Bethlehem Steel works as a model.
more on Bethlehem Steel
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