Category: Worship

What Heritage Resources are missing from this list?

LIST BELOW UPDATED AS OF 3/17/2011, 2:20 p.m.

PLEASE NOTE: WE ARE LISTING LOCAL, EXISTING RESOURCES

As part of the Heritage Action planning process, we’re in the midst of listing all the heritage resources that Pottstown has to offer. Think of a heritage resource as anything that is of any cultural, natural, historic or recreational significance in the history or current life of a community. Is there anything you’d like to see on the list?

Our next step will be to assess and rank these resources. Thanks for all the input so far!

NAME OF HERITAGE RESOURCE

Listed Historic Site/Structure
2 National Register Historic Districts
Pottsgrove Manor
Railroad Station
Roller Mills
Grubb Mansion
Jefferson Elementary School

Non-Listed Historic Site/Structure
The Carousel (planned)
Elks Club
Pottstown Historical Society
Historic Walking Tours
Potts Family Cemetery
Edgewood Cemetery
Candlelight House Tours

Cultural Site/Structure
historic churches
– Holy Trinity Church
– St. John’s Byzantine Church
– Emmanuel Lutheran Church
– Zion’s Reformed Church (Old Brick Church)
– St. Aloysius
– St. Peter’s
– Christ Episcopal Church
– Invictus Ministries
– Other churches

Edgewood Cemetery
Old St. Aloysius Cemetery

Archaeological Site/Structure

Museum or Interpretive Center
Pottstown Historical Society
Pottsgrove Manor

Educational Institution or Library
Pottstown School District
Pottstown Public Library
Montgomery County Community College
The Hill School
The Gallery School (arts)
High Street Music
Wyndcroft School
St. Aloysius School

Arts, Entertainment, Shopping
Assume all the downtown shops; maybe we’ll need a complete directory that’s easy to update on an informational kiosk?
The Gallery on High
Tri-County Performing Arts Center
Pottstown Arts & Cultural Alliance (PACA)
North Hall at MCCC
Boyer Gallery at Hill School
Center for the Arts at Hill School
High Street Music
The Ballroom on High (Swingkat)
Coventry Singers
Emmanuel Lutheran Concert Series
Sunnybrook Ballroom
Churchill – poetry & live music
Pottstown Symphony
Dada Gallery
Existing Murals

Trails, Greenways, Bikeways, Railroads
Schuylkill River Trail
Memorial Park
Bike Paths on High Street
High Street (wide – for parades)
Historic Bridges – 1903 Manatawny Bridge
Transportation
– PART – public transit
– Charles W. Dickinson Transportation Center (transit center)
– Pedestrian Underpass at MCCC
– Free bike program/bike lanes
– Airport

Natural & Scenic Sites
The Schuylkill River
Schuylkill River Trail
Riverfront Park
Manatawny Creek
Memorial Park

Parks & Recreation Areas
Pottstown Parks & Rec. Dept.
The whole Pottstown Parks & Rec. System, pocket parks, etc.
Pollock Park (Schuylkill River trailhead?)
Memorial Park
– Spray Park
– Trilogy Park
– Skate Park (planned)
– Miniature Golf/Manatawny Gateway (planned)
Riverfront Park
422 Sportsplex
High Street Yoga
Community Land Trust – Community Gardens
Pottstown Garden Club
The Dell & Far Fields at The Hill School

Festivals/Special Events
– In Riverfront Park
– Schuylkill River Festival
– Schuylkill River Sojourn (stopping point)
– First Saturdays
– Sunday Music in the Park
– Relay activities
– Weddings
– Fishing/rafting
– cross-country skiing
– biking
– Polar Bear Plunge
– Shiver on the River

Carousel of Flavor
Classic Car Shows
July 4th Celebration
Volleyball Rumble
Soapbox Derby
Parades
Family Fest
Open Doors (community day)
Halloween Parade
Candlelight Historic House Tour
Free Trolley Tours during special events

Heritage Tourism Business
– recreation
– Tri-County Bicycles
– Bike Share Program
– Bentley’s Boards (skate shop)
– Hidden River Outfitters (operates out of SRHA building)

– food/drink
– The Farmers’ Market
– Grumpy’s Handcarved Sandwiches
– Churchill, Inc.
– The Brickhouse
– Juan Carlos
– Funky Lil Kitchen
– Henry’s
– Positively Pasta
– Martha’s Famous
– Beverly’s Pastry Shop
– Company Cakes
– Burger King
– McDonald’s
– Dunkin Donuts
– Wawa
– Pottstown Diner
– High Street Diner (VIP)
– Very Best Restaurant
– Frankie & Johnnie’s
– Jack Cassady’s
– The Pourhouse
– The Icehouse
– Maria Angela’s
– Maximilliano’s
– Brunish Brothers Hot Dogs & Sausage

Media & Marketing
Borough Website
Tri-County Chamber of Commerce
Pottstown Downtown Improvement District Authority (PDIDA)
Roy Keeler/Roy’s Rants – blogger
WPAZ
PCTV
The Mercury
The Pottstown Post/Sanatoga Post
Positively!Pottstown – blog
Citizens for Pottstown’s Revitalization

Other
Walkable town
Wide, tree-scaped streets
Plenty of parking
Coordinated programs & activities promoting physical activity & health.
Historic architecture
Keystone Opportunity Zone
Mrs. Smith Pies
Pottstown Memorial Medical Center
Health & Wellness Foundation
Great volunteers
Elks Club, Rotary Club, Ambucs, Kiwanis,
Veterans Groups & other civic associations
Brookside Country Club
Train line
Small town atmosphere
Eagles/Firebirds
Hurricane Agnes
Underground Railroad
Reading/Philadelphia Railroads/Stations
Mills/Forges
Native American Lenni Lenape tribe
Dutch naming of the river
Steel industry & metal fabrication legacy
Firestone

Violin Virtuoso at Emmanuel Lutheran TODAY!

The Music at Emmanuel Series is one of Pottstown’s best-kept secrets that really should be shouted from the rooftops!

Violin virtuoso, Solomiya Ivakhiv, will perform today, Sunday, March 6 at 4pm, at Emmanuel Lutheran Church at 150 N. Hanover Street, Pottstown.

Ukrainian born violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv, has been hailed in the press for her “luminous performances” and her “assured and noble sound.” This gifted young artist has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in concert halls throughout Europe, North America and China; and has served as concertmaster for the Curtis Symphony and the Augusta Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Ivakhiv has received critical praise and is especially noted for her exceptional technique, superb musicianship and her distinct ability to illuminate a score with mature and “deeply realized” insights.

The Music at Emmanuel series provides outstanding music within the gorgeous Romanesque architecture of historic Emmanuel Lutheran Church, all in the heart of Pottstown. Most concerts are free, with voluntary contributions gratefully accepted.

The next concert in the series will feature the Copeland String Quartet on Sunday, April 3 at 4 pm. For more information, go here. Or find Music at Emmanuel on Facebook.

Urgent: Nutroll for sale at Holy Trinity tomorrow only!

Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church on South Street had been my mom’s parish before she married my dad and joined him at St. Aloysius more than 50 years ago. Yesterday, she and I stopped by the basement there to pick up something that I can’t mention here because it involves Christmas presents for the rest of my family.

Anyway… members of the Ladies’ Guild were hard at work producing hundreds of nutrolls, poppyseed rolls and apricot rolls. The smell was divine! We were allowed to buy a few in advance of their sale tomorrow. The nutroll is my absolute favorite, and I just can’t imagine it being better anywhere else! At $10 each, any of these rolls is well worth it. Thank you, Bonnie Stankunas and the Ladies’ Guild for keeping this holiday tradition alive! If they ever run a nutroll baking class, I will be sure to let you, dear readers, know all about it.

Nutroll mania!!
Where: Holy Trinity Church, 370 South Street, Pottstown, PA 19464
When: Sunday, Nov. 21, before and after 10 am Mass
Cost: $10 each
What: Nutroll (walnuts), Apricot roll, Poppyseed roll. All can be frozen and brought out for holiday gatherings. YUM!

Law enforcement & citizens must become a team

Below is a copy of a post sent to The Mercury in response to the article on last night’s community meeting at Invictus Ministries at 79 N. Hanover. Of course, it’s my opinion, but I’m also trying to be objective in my observations. There’s a lot of work to be done – essential work that greatly impacts the town’s entire future.

“Thank you so much to Bishop Everett Debnam for hosting and leading this effort. I hope this wasn’t a once-and-done meeting. It is only the first step – letting everyone blow off steam. In my opinion, the meeting did not move into a constructive, problem-solving mode. Realistically, that was probably not possible on the first go-round; you usually can’t skip steps when repairing or re-building relationships.

What came across: 1) There are long-standing problems with how the public perceives their police. 2) Law enforcement officials do need more citizen participation/witnesses, but almost seemed to be blaming the citizens & putting it all back on them. This is not the last we’re going to hear on these matters. Okay. Everyone needs to try to do better.

For me, key pieces of new information were: Local and Philly gangs have been feuding over drug-turf in town… since 2006! This year police cut foot patrols in the core neighborhoods. Shootings have escalated in the core throughout 2010. The police are re-instating the patrols in January 2011.

Okay. There’s no going back. It is what it is… unless I got that wrong.

This has to be a multi-stage process. The D.A. did say that as well. This is just the beginning. Relationships have to be built. Like most relationship problems, this one is rooted in communication. There need to be constructive, visible steps taken to improve communications & get results. My starter wishlist:

1) Put the tip line phone numbers on the home page of the PD’s website, not buried on other pages.

2) Put information about the “witness training” program, which was mentioned at the meeting, on the PD home page.

3) Release some meaningful crime statistics to the public now and follow-up on those statistics every quarter.

4) Borough: charge ahead on code enforcement!

5) Citizens: Introduce yourself to the officers on the beat in your neighborhood! Go to the Town Watch meetings EVERY 3rd Friday. Meeting this Friday, PAL building, 146 E. King Street, 7 pm.)

6) Schedule a follow-up meeting – maybe in 2 months at Invictus? Commit to building the relationship between citizens and law enforcement. It requires “face-time.” The monthly happy hours I’m hosting as part of economic revitalization efforts are built on the same premise. You can’t get things done as a team if you don’t know and trust your teammates. (All are invited to those, by the way. See website & rsvp.)

7) I personally would like to get donations and a motion sensor lighting program underway. A small step, but it’s something.

Sue Repko
Positively!Pottstown
http://www.positivelyptown.com”

Hoop Dreams, Hoop Memories

Tonight I’ll be at Father Doyne Hall at St. Pius X for one last run up and down the hardwood. While I’m proud of a lot of things accomplished during my Pius years, being part of two Ches-Mont championship teams in 1978 and 1979 ranks right up there, mostly because a lot of people thought we couldn’t do it, but also because I now think of it as a defining period for me, personally and politically, although I would not have described it that way then.

In the course of doing research for a memoir I’m writing about growing up, I’ve spent some time at the microform reader at the Pottstown Public Library, reading old articles from The Mercury. As so often happens, while I was looking for one particular article, I got distracted by another.

Back in those days, a sportswriter by the name of Ken Murray* had a column in The Mercury called “Ken’s Corner.” On June 21, 1974 it was titled, “Is There Room For a New League?” and it was all about St. Pius X looking to get into a new league now that the Suburban Athletic Conference had disbanded. Murray wrote, “What league could the small Catholic school join without stepping in over its head?” He goes on to speculate about a league of smaller schools, perhaps including Pottsgrove, Upper Perk, Methacton and Landsdale Catholic.

I’m pretty sure I read that piece back then, even though I would have been just eleven years old. I was a sports junkie. I followed major league baseball, basketball and football. And that was the year that I – and a handful of other girls – barged our way into Little League baseball in Pottstown. Back then, competition – any competition – felt like a matter of life and death to me. (I’m not always proud of that, but that’s for another time.) As a tomboy, I’d had a chip on my shoulder for as long as I could remember. Anything a boy could do, I wanted to do better. And then sports opportunities for girls were federally mandated through the passage of Title IX in 1972, and I felt personally vindicated.

Another reason I’m pretty sure I was a regular reader of Murray’s column is because I’d met him right around that time. Eight days after the Pius piece, his column featured me, one of my teammates (Caren Holsberger), and our baseball team (M & M Green) in “A Lonely Battle for Sue, Caren.” (That’s the article I was actually looking for.)

In middle school at St. Al’s I dreamed of playing basketball for Pius (the Suburban Catholic League champs in 1974), and it’s not inconceivable that I carried a kind of “I’ll show you, Ken Murray and all you other doubters” attitude around for years until I got the chance. Pius entered the Ches-Mont my junior year. The league had some big schools – Coatesville, Downington, West Chester Henderson, West Chester East, Pottstown. Murray was absolutely right. Pius was a small school. It was the only Catholic school. And we were all white. Racial tensions from the 70s still ran high; I remember police escorting us off the bus at some schools. Playoff games and title games were fraught with emotion and a kind of danger. And we won. Yes, we had some amazing talent (shout-out to my classmate and teammate, Carol Glutz, the school’s all-time leading scorer.) But under Coaches Bernadette and Bill Travers, we also worked our butts off. Every day.

All of this opened my eyes to a larger world: laws got passed in Washington that affected me personally. Gender equity, race relations, and social unrest weren’t far-away concepts that just appeared in headlines. They played themselves out in our own towns and on basketball courts. I think I was also tuned in because I was in the midst of getting a Catholic education, steeped in the values of social justice. While I have not been a practicing Catholic for quite some time, that blood still runs through me. There’s no shaking that, nor do I want to.

So, when I step on the court at Pius tonight and pose for photos with our championship banner with my sister, Michele Dunleavy (varsity girls’ coach at Phoenixville), and my old teammates and friends, all this – and a whole lot more – will be running through my heart and head. And through my veins. St. Pius X will always be more than a building. Its spirit will continue to move through all those who walked its halls and played on its courts and fields – sometimes as though their lives depended on it.

* Could Ken Murray, former sportswriter for The Mercury be the same Ken Murray covering the NFL for The Baltimore Sun? That would be very cool. 🙂

Proudly wearing the #5

Superintendent Candidates Forum Tonight

The three candidates for Superintendent of the Pottstown School District will appear in a public forum tonight at 7 pm at Invictus Mininistries, 79 N. Hanover St. (at the corner of Beech.) They will all respond to the same questions, which can be found in this Mercury article. You can even post your own questions there, and the Mercury will pass them on.

Whether or not you agree with how this forum came to be scheduled, the bottom line is that it’s a chance for all residents to see the candidates speak and interact with the public, knowing they are one step from leading the district.

The candidates are Edgewood Elementary Principal Angela Tuck, Director of Education Jeff Sparagana, and Assistant Superintendent Reed Lindley. Each one has a wealth of experience in the district and a broad array of loyal supporters. The community is fortunate to have three candidates qualified to step up to lead.

Community discussion of RAGTIME this Thursday

This Thursday evening, May 20th, Village Productions/Tri-County Performing Arts Center will be leading a Community Outreach Program to provide education and encourage discussion about the social and historical themes in the musical production, RAGTIME. It will take place from 7-8 pm at Christ Episcopal Church at 316 E. High Street, Pottstown.

The discussion will be led by the Director of RAGTIME, Neal Newman, and the Music Director, Deborah Stimson-Snow (who is also the Artistic Director for the Tri-PAC).

RAGTIME is based on the award-winning E.L. Doctorow novel of the same name, and is being performed at the Tri-PAC on Thursdays through Sundays, June 3rd through 20th.

The public is also welcome to access a complimentary STUDY GUIDE about the work, which can be used by individuals or groups before or after the program to provide information about the plot and social and historical issues in RAGTIME, which revolve around immigration, culture clashes, and the hopes and dreams of the featured characters. The STUDY GUIDE can be downloaded directly from the Tri-PAC website here.

Pottstown’s Weekend… at a glance

THINGS TO SEE AND DO IN POTTSTOWN THIS WEEKEND AND BEYOND…

May 14 – State of the Organization, reception & multimedia presentation
Special Guest Speakers Lisa Waltz & Martha McGeary Snider
Location: Tri-County Performing Arts Center, 245 E. High Street
Time: 6-8 pm
RSVP: events@villageproductions.org

May 10-15 – Spring Student Faculty Show in the Gallery
Location: The Gallery on High, 254 E. High Street, Pottstown
Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Thursday 10am to 4:30pm; Friday 10am to 5:30pm; Saturday 10am to 3pm; closed Sunday and Monday.

May 15 and every Saturday – Singer/songwriter Showcase
Location: Churchill Artisan Baker & Chocolatier, 137 High Street, Pottstown
Time: 11 am – 1 pm
Phone: 484-941-5100

May 15 and every Saturday night – DJ Dance Party
Location: The Brickhouse Restaurant, 152 E. High St., Pottstown
Phone: 610-906-3527

May 16 – Margaretta R. Lamb & the Boyertown Area Choral Association’s 20th Annual Free Spring Concert
Location: St. James Lutheran Church, 1101 E. High St., Pottstown
Time: 3 pm
Cost: Free!

May 22-23 – Senior Follies
Location: Tri-County Performing Arts Center, 245 E. High Street, Pottstown
Time: Saturday, 8 pm; Sunday, 3 pm
Tickets: ADULTS $12; STUDENTS/SENIORS (65+) $10; CHILDREN (12 & under) $8
$2 off per ticket for groups of 10 or more!

May 22 – Sammy Kaye Orchestra
Location: Sunnybrook Ballroom
Time: 8 pm
Cover: $25 Advance tickets; $32 at the door.

May 24-Aug. 6 – Montgomery County Community College, West Campus Gallery presents
Philadelphia/Tri State Artists Equity
61st Anniversary Exhibition
Location: North Hall, 16 High Street, Pottstown
Time: Mon.-Thurs. 8 am-9:30 pm; Fri. 8 am-4:30 pm
Cost: All exhibits are free & open to the public.
Opening reception Wednesday, June 9 from 5-7pm

June 3-20 – Ragtime, The Musical
Location: Tri-County Performing Arts Center, 245 E. High Street, Pottstown
Time:Thursday – 7:30 pm; Friday – 8:00 pm; Saturday – 8:00 pm; Sunday – 3:00 pm
Tickets: ADULT: Thurs $19; Fri, Sat & Sun $23
STUDENT/SENIOR(65+): Thurs $17; Fri, Sat, Sun $21
CHILD (12 & under): Thurs $13; Fri, Sat & Sun $15
$2 off per ticket for groups of 10 or more!

Kinnara Choral Ensemble – May 2, 7:30 p.m.

Thanks to Mike Holliday for tipping me off about this upcoming performance when I ran into him last weekend at Churchill’s. On Sunday, May 2 at 7:30 p.m., the Kinnara Choral Ensemble will be performing at Emmanuel Lutheran Church, 150 N. Hanover Street in a FREE concert. Check out the Church’s phenomenal music series, which is truly one of Pottstown’s performing arts gems.

Kinnara, a 20-voice chamber choir conducted by J.D. Burnett, hails from my neck of the woods here in central NJ. They’re in their second season and making quite a name for themselves.

The concert is called “all the letting go,” and Kinnara’s Facebook page describes the musical selection as, “An hour-long choral concert exploring music of death, loss, hope, and healing. William Schuman’s compelling Carols of Death and movements from the fresh and agitated a cappella Requiem by Zdenek Lukas anchor a journey through the gamut of human emotion.”

While all the concerts in the series at Emmanuel Lutheran are free, a free-will offering will be collected.

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