Comprehensive Plan Update: If you want to see what the Planning Commission is recommending for future land use in the city, stop by City Hall on Tuesday, August 31 at 5:30 pm to talk with staff and review exhibits. At 6:30 pm, the Planning Commission will hold a public hearing and they want to hear your thoughts. Written comments can be submitted but must be received by 5 pm on August 27 to be provided to the Commission prior to the meeting.
If you are traveling to Colonial Williamsburg this fall, you may want to keep an eye out at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum for a silver tankard made by Paul Revere. You can learn more about the item at the History Blog.
Visit the Public Domain Review for a photo essay Porch Memories by Federica Soletta. As we’ve already touched on here at PHW, porches are uniquely embedded in American architecture and culture. Combining historic images and small vignettes helps bring the photos to life and highlight the porch as a scene of American life.
Some of our best finds in the tracing of historic stories are from the Virginia Chronicle newspaper collections. The Library of Virginia dedicated a blog post to the worldwide tour these scanned and searchable pages take before they become accessible to researchers online.
Strong Towns blog posted a four part series on the alley in America. Catch all four parts in The American Alley: A Hidden Resource, Origins of the American Alley, End of the American Alley, and Rediscovering the Forgotten Human Scale. The series has been collected into a free downloadable ebook, also available on their blog.