Finding Aids

The Pennsylvania Power & Light Co. is an energy utility and transmission distributer based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Arising from a business merger, the company was founded on June 4, 1920, and soon after began providing energy to eastern and central Pennsylvania. Renamed PP&L Corporation circa 1995, the company continues to operate as an energy provider within northeastern Pennsylvania. The collection consists primarily of photographs that depict sites of various PP&L subsidiaries and those directly operated by the company. It is a resource that can be used for insight into PP&L's early operations and eastern and central Pennsylvania industrial development. Images within this collection range from 1920 to 1973. Researchers interested in electric power transmission and its development within the state of Pennsylvania would find this collection useful.

Pennsylvania Power & Light traces its origins to the various water and gas light companies that began operating in the eastern part of the state during the mid-nineteenth century. The records of the Pennsylvania Power & Light Company predecessor and subsidiary companies document the history of the gas and electric utility industry in eastern Pennsylvania in the years between 1853 and 1957. The collection includes both the administrative and operating records of more than 1100 companies that merged to form the PP&L system.

Pennsylvania Power & Light Company formed in 1920 through the consolidation of eight electric utilities companies serving central and eastern Pennsylvania. The collection primarily includes corporate papers documenting the company’s acquisition of various competing electric companies in the early-to-mid twentieth century by way of franchise building, market research and corporate communications, hydroelectric development through studies and surveys on Pennsylvania’s waterways, and material documenting the company’s various power plants in central eastern Pennsylvania. Financial and accounting records of the Pennsylvania Water & Power Company, which PP&L acquired in 1955, are also included.

From 1925 to 1958, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company issued a series of advertising calendars, each measuring over two feet square. Of the thirty-three calendars published, twenty-eight were illustrated by Grif Teller (1899-1993). This small collection consists of six posters featuring the paintings from the 1949, 1950, 1951, 1953, 1954, and 1955 Pennsylvania Railroad advertising calendars. The title of the painting and the words "Pennsylvania Railroad" appear in the border beneath each image.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. These records provide nearly comprehensive coverage of corporate matters for the entire time span and reasonably complete coverage of the functional departments from 1920 to 1950, with less coverage from 1893 to 1920 and from 1950 to 1968.

The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was chartered in 1846 to complete an all-railroad network across the state. Between 1855 and 1874, the PRR underwent rapid expansion and emerged as one of the two largest railroad systems in the region east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio. In 1910, the PRR entered Manhattan through tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers. This collection consists of flyers and a brochure for Pennsylvania Railroad special fares or trains.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This small collection of photographs covers the planning, surveying, and building of the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels under the Hudson River, connecting New Jersey and New York in the early twentieth century.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This collection of photographs primarily depict the PRR itself, but numerous views of similar facilities and equipment on other railroads, of nearby buildings and properties, or of standardized equipment and accessories that were collected for reference are included. Almost all of the photographs are the work of commercial photographers hired on short term contract, but some are prints from the company's own negatives. The collection have been arranged by subject and organized into three series: Equipment, trains, and personnel; Structures and right of way; and Company magazine photographs.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This is a collection of thirty-six blank, preprinted forms dating between 1960 and 1967, mostly related to the inspection and movement of freight cars.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This collection consists of materials related to the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge and trestle near Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. There is a copy of an erection diagram from 1896 and a copy of the application for the bridge to be a historic site to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and tratffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This small collection consists of six schematic diagrams of racks and signals placed in service or removed from service, mostly in connection with the step-by-step construction of the Philadelphia Improvements of 1927 to 1952.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This collection consists of one report from 1959 by General Electric Company, Locomotive & Car Equipment Department consisting of an electric motive power study.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This collection consists of two items. One is a copy of a report from 1959 by General Electric Company, Locomotive & Car Equipment Department containing an electric motive power study. The second item is a menu with a cover design by industrial designer Raymond Loewy (1893-1986).

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This item is an unpublished report titled, "Analysis of Proposed Use of Prefabricated Food on Dining Cars," written by the Pennsylvania Railroad, Dining Car Department, Research Committee in 1945. The report includes sample menus, data on preparation, and findings from experiments conducted by the committee.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This item is a scrapbook kept by a railroad station agent(s) somewhere near or south of Philadelphia between 1887 and 1888. The purpose of the volume was to enable the agent to make out waybills for freight by containing updated information as to the rates to be charged on various specific goods, the division of rates with other companies for interline movements, and any embargoes or restrictions on routings. The volume offers a snapshot of the types of traffic, mostly iron and steel, livestock and agricultural products, most common to this territory and of the various through routings common at this time.

Timetables issued periodically to the public, generally at ticket offices, showing the schedules of passenger trains on various routes.

Founded in 1846 with headquarters in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company (PRR) was an American Class-1 Railroad that pervaded early American culture. As a chief source of employment and transportation, the PRR served as a national symbol of America's progress as a leading industrial nation. This item is a poster featuring an E6s Atlantic class locomotive on the turntable at the Pennsylvania Railroad's 46th Street Enginehouse in West Philadelphia. The poster was created to celebrate 150th anniversary of the Pennsylvania Railroad's charter.

The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was chartered in 1846 to complete an all-railroad network across the state. Between 1855 and 1874, the PRR underwent rapid expansion and emerged as one of the two largest railroad systems in the region east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio. In 1910, the PRR entered Manhattan through tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers. This is a viewbook or souvenir album containing views related to the Pennsylvania Railroad in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, including stations, bridges, and tracks.

This is a small collection of three postcards. Two postcards have images of Pennsylvania Railroad stations in Greensburg and Swissvale, Pennsylvania. The third postcard is an advertisement for Pennsylvania Cement Co. showing the Whitney (N.C.) Dam. The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was chartered in 1846 to completing an all-rail road across the state. In 1857 the Pennsylvania Railroad purchased the old Main Line system and eventually brought the entire line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh under one management.

The Joseph D. Lovell Locomotive Rosters constitute a partial roster of Pennsylvania Railroad steam, electric and early diesel locomotives to 1946. The collection also contains seven small ledgers listing the production of not only the Juniata Shops, but also the earlier Altoona Machine Shops (1866-1904) and locomotives purchased from outside builders, principally the Baldwin Locomotive Works. His lists include rosters for both the Pennsylvania Railroad proper and its predecessor lines.

There is also a folder containing copies of letters and notes by Robert B. Watson documenting the provenance of the records.

The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was chartered in 1846 to completing an all-rail road across the state. Between 1855 and 1874, the PRR underwent rapid expansion and emerged as one of the two largest railroad systems in the area east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio. This collection consists of two interviews conducted in 1998 in West Chester, Pennsylvania with five women who worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

The Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts was a membership organization of Philadelphia's political, mercantile, and manufacturing elite to promote the causes of domestic manufacturers, particularly textiles. The Pennsylvania Manufacturing Society accounts include a ledger of both the general and special accounts of the manufacturing fund. The bulk of the transactions are from the period of active operations, with the settlement of accounts taking place between 1790 and 1801.

Pennsylvania Water & Power Company was established to store, transport, and generate water power for both commercial and manufacturing purposes. The Holtwood facility outside of Lancaster, Pennsylvania was the first power plant to have both a hydroelectric generator and a coal power generator. The company was originally called McCall’s Ferry Power Co. and founded in 1905. This small collection consists of photographs that depict the progress of several construction projects at the Holtwood and Safe Harbor plants. Most of these images date from 1951 to 1954, well after the original construction of both sites.

The Pennsylvania Water & Power Company formed in 1910 to finish construction of the Holtwood hydroelectric facility along the lower Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. The company achieved numerous advancements in hydroelectric and steam power development in the early twentieth century, and helped bring about the electrification of Baltimore and, later, much of the Chesapeake and eastern Pennsylvania area. The records largely consist of correspondence to and from Pennsylvania Water & Power's chief engineer and later president, John Abbet Walls, and other company heads relating to operations, customers, dam construction, and numerous subjects associated with the hydroelectric industry.

The Pennzoil Company is a large oil-producing, refining, and marketing company established in 1913. Its largest product is synthetic motor oil made from natural gas. This item is a single volume containing four parts; it was intended to provide new employees with an orientation to the company and the oil and gas industry.

Penrose Robinson Hoopes (1892-1976) was a mechanical engineer, inventor, author, and horologist. He specialized in the design of factory equipment, particularly high-production automatic machinery. This collection consists of documents pertaining to Penrose R. Hoopes' career as an engineer and inventor. Hoopes' work includes machine designs for the American Chicle Company, Campbell Soup Company, Johnson and Johnson, and the Ferracute Machine Company. The bulk of the collection material spans from 1923 to 1968, with some patent material and typescript excerpts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The collection includes correspondence and blueprints related to Hoopes' work as a designer and inventor, as well as employee records, manuscript material, photographs, trade pamphlets, and bibliographic information.

Russell J. Seibert (1914-2004) was the former director of Longwood Gardens. This collection consists of a typewritten script of a speech, a cassette recording of the speech, and accompanying slides.

Peter Bauduy (1769?-1833), a French refugee from Santo Domingo, was a partner of E.I. du Pont in several business ventures. Bauduy had resigned from E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company and brought suit in 1816 to dissolve the firm and distribute its assets. The collection includes microfilm copies of the Delaware Court of Chancery's "general reference files" regarding the case, as well as files for Victor du Pont vs. Merritt H. Paxson.

Peter Eisenhower Packard (1948-2017) spent his career in information technology at Bell Laboratories, SIAC, Bessemer Trust, and Sperry-UNIVAC. The Sperry Corporation was an electronics company, and the UNIVAC Division manufactured the first commercial digital computer. This collection consists of nine technical programming and operators' manuals for UNIVAC systems, which date from 1962 to 1969.

Peter K. Baumgarten (1926-2000) was a chemical engineer for the DuPont Company for thirty years who continued as a consultant for the company after his retirement. He worked as a chemical engineer for DuPont and Westinghouse, retiring from the Savannah River Site in 1993. He also taught math and physics part-time at the University of South Carolina (USC)-Aiken. This small collection consists of papers, speeches, notes, presentations, and articles that Baumgarten wrote while working at DuPont as a chemical engineer and then as a consultant. His research focused on ion exchange for decontamination and waste removal from radioactive sources such as the Savanah River Plant.

The Pew Charitable Trusts are a major philanthropic organization based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Part of the Pew Charitable Trusts records in the Manuscripts and Archives Department, the digital archive consists primarily of eGrant products and Pew publications.

This collection consists of a microfilm of volume twenty-four of the diary of Phoebe George Bradford (1794-1840), a native of Cecil County, Maryland, and resident of Wilmington, Delaware. The diaries contain descriptions of social doings and daily activities, opinions on family matters and religion, and occasional references to national matters and local happenings.

Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company (succeeded by the Reading Company) began construction in 1833 and the mainline from Philadelphia to Pottsville opened in 1842. This is a small collection of copperplate engravings and some medallions. They are presumably some sort of seat check for destinations along the mainline. The collection also contains three medallions, two related to the Jamestown Centennial Exposition in 1907 and one from Baldwins Standard dried beef.

Philadelphia Bookstore Company was a wholesale and retail bookseller incorporated in 1902 in New Jeresey. The store was located on the 1000 block of Race Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This item is one volume of meeting minutes dating from 1902 to 1903. By-laws are included.

The Philadelphia Commercial Museum (PCM) was a museum located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its collections were focused on worldwide manufacturing and trade, with an emphasis on domestic and foreign commerce relations. The museum operated from 1897 to 1994 and was also known as the Philadelphia Museums and the Philadelphia Civic Center Museum. Curatorial areas of note include extensive African, Asian, and South American collections, as well as a large ship model collection. PCM also served as a location for conventions and trade shows through the 1990s; it was affiliated with the Port of History Museum in Philadelphia. The bulk of the collection material dates from the 1910s to the 1990s. This collection includes photographs, diagrams, object inventories, financial ledgers, board minutes, advertisements, brochures, and trade publications. The collection would be useful to researchers interested in Philadelphia museums and the history of trade and commerce.

The collection consists of digital scans of photographs of bridges on the Philadelphia Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which ran from Philadelphia to Harrisburg.

The Philadelphia Electric Company was incorporated under the laws of Pennsylvania on October 31, 1929, as a merger of The Philadelphia Electric Company (incorporated in Pa. on October 27, 1902), the Philadelphia Suburban-Counties Gas & Electric Company, and three other small utility companies. It is the primary gas and electric company for Philadelphia, its surrounding counties and Cecil and Harford Counties in northeastern Maryland. Their records consist of microfilm copies of the minute books of about 150 of the predecessor companies of the Philadelphia Electric Company.

The lithographs include the following Philadelphia printers' names: E. Beaulieu; Herline & Co.; King & Baird; Wagner & McGuigan; and W. H. Rease. This is a group of nine mid-nineteenth century lithographs showing illustrations of Philadelphia factories.

Ice and coal companies delivered ice in summer and coal in winter to meet the growing demands of consumers and businesses for refrigeration and heat. The collection consists of trade cards from seventy-one companies that were used as advertisements and as order tickets for ice and coal.

The Philadelphia Maritime Exchange was formed in 1875 for the purpose of circulating marine intelligence relating to the port of Philadelphia. The records consist primarily of account books, including journals (1912-1942), ledgers (1875-1896), cash books (1875-1957), trial balances (1897-1903, 1911-1941), and invoice books (1922-1925).

The Philadelphia Phillies are an American professional baseball team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they compete in the National League. The team was founded in 1883 by Alfred J. Reach (1840-1928), who purchased the Worcester, Massachusetts, professional baseball club and moved it to Philadelphia. The records of the Philadelphia National League Club document the Philadelphia Phillies professional baseball organization, and includes various papers and records from the National League and Major League Baseball in general, primarily dating from the 1950s through the 1970s.

Philadelphia Quartz Company began as a family soap and candle business in 1831. It was founded in Philadelphia by Joseph Elkinton (1830-1905). It began producing and selling sodium silicate in 1861 as a builder to replace rosin in soap formulations. This image of office includes three male clerks and one visitor.

Founded in 1831 as the Elkinton Company and later renamed, Philadelphia Quartz Company became an important innovator during World War I by discovering that silica gels could be used as a base to manufacture catalysts for cracking crude oil molecules to make high-octane gasoline and developing potassium silicate which was adopted for use in cathode ray tubes. The company's records includes business records and the personal papers of the company's founding family.

The Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company operated bus and trolley lines, many of which originated in Upper Darby Township on the western border of Philadelphia and served Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties. Suburban Station and the Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Company building are both located in Center City. The Red Arrow transportation lines are found in Philadelphia's western suburbs. This small collection consists of photographs of Suburban Station, railroad and trolley tracks, and bus shelters.

Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS), the nation's first mutual savings bank, was founded in 1816. In 1927 the Society commissioned Howe and Lescaze, a local architectural firm that had previously designed traditional style banks for the institution, to draw up plans for a new building to be constructed at the corner of 12th and Market Streets. This collection is composed of materials from two Philadelphia mutual savings banks which date from the first half of the nineteenth century. The collection has been divided into two series: Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS) and Western Savings Fund Society (WSFS) which was merged with PSFS in 1982. A significant part of the collection consists of photographs of bank buildings represented by traditional styles and in later years by contemporary suburban sites. The American banking industry has usually conducted business in formal bank buildings. The styles of these buildings have changed with passing fashions of architectural taste. This collection provides a good visual record of these developments.

The papers cover Reed’s private and governmental activities which include work with the War Production Board and the Mission for Economic Affairs during the Second World War. Correspondence files detail his role as a director and a member of the board of directors for numerous corporations and government organizations. Reed’s friendship and political relationship with Dwight David Eisenhower is documented, as is his role in persuading Eisenhower to run for President in 1952.

The Phillips family were prominent Philadelphia merchants and manufacturers over four generations. The records consist of four volumes of merchant and importer William Phillips (1771-1845), a daybook from the textile firm of Lewis, Phillips & Co., and an unrelated receipt book of Philadelphia wine merchant Francis Coppinger, dating from 1794 to 1795.

This collection consists of a microfilm volumes one and two of the diaries of Phoebe George Bradford (1794-1840), a native of Cecil County, Maryland, and resident of Wilmington, Delaware. The diaries contain descriptions of social doings and daily activities, opinions on family matters and religion, and occasional references to national matters and local happenings.

This collection consists of microfilms of volumes 1, 6-10, 15, 16, and 24 of the diaries of Phoebe George Bradford (1794-1840), a native of Cecil County, Maryland, and resident of Wilmington, Delaware. The diaries contain descriptions of social doings and daily activities, opinions on family matters and religion, and occasional references to national matters and local happenings.

This collection consists of photocopies of volumes 7-10, 15, 16, and 24 of the diaries of Phoebe George Bradford (1794-1840), a native of Cecil County, Maryland, and resident of Wilmington, Delaware. The diaries contain descriptions of social doings and daily activities, opinions on family matters and religion, and occasional references to national matters and local happenings.