Talk:List of Pennsylvania state historical markers in Philadelphia County

Photos and links in these PA marker lists
The PA state markers are often different than the NRHP designations or other local designations (e.g. Pittsburgh Landmarks) in that they often refer to people, places, events, etc., not just structures. The physical evidence of these historic events are often long gone leaving nothing but empty fields or unrelated new structures.

The PA plaques and their text are copyrighted so using images whose primary subject is a plaque is a copyright violation and is not appropriate for Wikipedia in list-type of article such as these. The PA historical plaques can be included in a picture (as an extraneous part like this photo here), but the cannot be the main subject of the photo (like here...this photo is likely a © violation, tagged wrong & shouldn't be at Commons). The plaques fall under the same category as sculptures (see Freedom of panorama and Template:Non-free 3D art). So please keep this in mind when you are adding photos to these tables.

For these reasons, some of the images in the table are likely to be contextual just like the markers themselves. Often a marker is about a person, not the person's birthplace or workplace in particular although it might be near such a location. Therefore, an image of a person or event is probably appropriate for use in the table. This is quite different than the NRHP lists that most editors are familiar with, but those lists are most for historic places and structures that have maintained their integrity, unlike the PA markers. For an example of how images can be used to populate a PA historical marker list, please see List of Pennsylvania state historical markers in Allegheny County.

Also, before Wiki-linking a marker title to an article, it is probably good check the marker context of the marker by reading its text after finding it at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission's database (here). Sometimes the topic of the marker is not obvious from the title. CrazyPaco (talk) 23:55, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Missing markers?
It seems to me that there are many PHMS markers in Philadelphia that are not on this list. For example, Edwin Forrest House has a marker outside, headed Freedom Theatre, which is the third major use of this house. It was formerly Philadelphia School of Design for Women. The photo shows the side of the marker, but it is not in this list. I suspect that there are more such instances. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:01, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * See New Century Guild, which has a marker. I was present when it was dedicated. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:09, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The title of marker for the Edwin Forrest House is actually "Freedom Theatre", so it is there on the list. The title of the PA Historical markers are often different than the NRHP or other names. However, it is certainly possible that the PHMC database is incomplete. For sure the approved 2010 markers are not yet on the list, and there are several for Philadelphia.  What I did is searched the database only Philadelphia (or any other county) and added the information in that table which was pulled by that search.  CrazyPaco (talk) 01:44, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for clarifying that. I also see the New Century Guild in the table. So initially the title of the marker is what you place in the table, and then perhaps other editors should change the title to link to the Wikipedia article? Freedom Theatre has had two other names in the past, but the name in the table is the name on the marker. If the name of the article is something else, but with a redirect, editors should leave it that way? --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:41, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, in all cases of constructing each county's table, I've used the title of the marker that is given in the PHMC database, which I believe would be the official title, and likely what also the title that appears on the marker. Since it is a list of PHMC markers, I thought that was the way to go, because many marked locations can go by multiple names. This also makes it easier to look up in the PHMC database. Because of the nature of these markers, the marker's context isn't always intuitive based on the title (e.g. is it particularly about a person, what a person accomplished, the person's birthplace, etc.? It the marker for an existing building, an event that happened there, or for a person that used to work/live there? It is not always clear), and it is often necessary to look a marker's text on the PHMC database. I would also think it may make it easier to add new makers as they are dedicated in the future. The text of the marker is copyrighted, so I couldn't add that to the table, but hopefully the topics column, also provided by the PHMC database, provides some of the context. All the information is added almost exactly as it is in the PHMC database, except for glaring errors (like GPS coordinates in the Eastern Hemisphere) or obvious inconsistencies (alphabetizing by "the"). That is the only way I knew to keep things consistent from county to county, at least to start. Now that doesn't mean things can't be changed, but that is just how I started off entering all the information. The seven Pittsburgh metro area counties are mostly completed if you want to look how those were done as an example. CrazyPaco (talk) 18:29, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Person, or building?
Should the table have a photo of the person, such as George Gordon Meade, or his house, a gift of the citizens of Philadelphia to his wife?--DThomsen8 (talk) 12:29, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it could be either. These markers leave the images more open to interpretation than does the NRHP lists. The title denotes that is mostly about the man. The text of the marker in the database does mention the house. Perhaps the quality of the image can help decide in these scenarios. That said:


 * Here's a direct link to the marker's text. To me, it seems the marker's is honoring the the man, not the historic nature of the house, and that the marker is placed at the house because that is the most logical location for it (the man makes the house worthy of the marker in this case). Again, I don't think it makes that much of a difference, but I'd tend to lean with an image of the person. I also don't think image of the house is all that "informative". I wouldn't think the image of the house is wrong, but I would probably go with the person if I was doing it. BTW, there are some cases where the state has placed markers for both the person and the house. CrazyPaco (talk) 21:04, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

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Newly Generated Table (2021-09-21)
I downloaded fresh data from PHMC's current website and re-generated the table using some google sheets hacking. There are now 321 markers in Philadelphia County. The old/new data is combined as follows:


 * The marker titles are updated to always agree with the marker title in the PHMC database, except that when there are two PHMC entries have the same marker title, I disambiguated them (e.g. "First African Baptist Church (West Philadelphia)" and "First African Baptist Church (16th Street)"), and a few minor formatting/consistency edits. Wiki links are preserved from the old table to the new one.


 * The images are preserved verbatim from the old table to the new one; I didn't add images for new entries.


 * The date dedicated, location, marker type, topics, and missing items are generated freshly from the new PHMC data.

Most differences (visible in the diff for the revision) are adding the new entries and minor formatting consistencies. However, I did check for discrepancies, and I log the differences for the record:


 * The dedication date was changed for First Protest Against Slavery and Walnut Street Prison, and less meaningfully for Old St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church (specifying day and month). I assume the previous dates were errors either in the wiki page or in a past state of the database.


 * Categories were changed for Dewey's Sit-in and a category was added for Harvey Pollack and Laurel Hill Cemetery. Many other category names were updated in the current data (e.g. "Sports & Recreation" instead of "Sports")


 * I did not check the location info differences; many descriptions and GPS coordinates were different. This would need more investigation.


 * Schuylkill Arsenal is now listed as missing by PHMC.

Comments/discussion welcome! Cstanford.math (talk) 23:04, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

New Markers 2021
Just including a note here, I may add these to the article later. There are apparently 3 new markers approved for 2021, not dedicated yet:
 * Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842-1932)
 * Dr. Oscar James Cooper (1888- 1972)
 * Wyck House and Rose Garden

See Cstanford.math (talk) 23:48, 26 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Update: the following are now in the PHMC database:


 * Dr. Oscar James Cooper
 * Ed Bradley (1941-2006)
 * Gloria Casarez (1971-2014)
 * John S. Trower (1849-1911)
 * Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977)
 * Philadelphia Gay News


 * has added Gloria Casarez, the rest are currently not in our table. When I have a bit of time, I'll generate a new table from the Excel data from PHMC. (I have a spreadsheet set up so updating it all at once is not too difficult.)


 * BTW N-gio, Cyrus Bustill is not missing in the database, did you find that it's missing from personally visiting? They might have a way to report it on their website. Caleb Stanford (talk) 22:08, 19 December 2021 (UTC)


 * , over a month ago I visited the location and did not see the marker, but I'll check again soon, in case the removal was temporary. n-gio (talk) 01:07, 20 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Looks missing indeed (or at least moved): here is a picture of where the marker is supposed to be on Google maps street view (in front of Tartes), and here is a picture from October which shows it is gone. I think we should report.


 * BTW, the place it's in front of, Tartes, is really good, highly recommend checking it out if you do walk by the area again. Caleb Stanford (talk) 15:43, 20 December 2021 (UTC)


 * , I walked by the location and the marker is still missing; the sheared bolts are still in place where it stood. I emailed PHMC to report this. (Unfortunately, Tartes was closed today, but thanks for the recommendation.) n-gio (talk) 21:30, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Update: new marker data from PHMC now live in the table! Caleb Stanford (talk) 16:22, 20 December 2021 (UTC)