All Episodes

ABC:LHS #009   Attorneys General
Richard Rush served in the cabinets of three presidents and ran for Vice President in 1832, but is frequently an afterthought to his Founding Father parent Benjamin Rush and his son, who founded Rush's Lancers.
Henry Gilpin was appointed US Attorney General just in time to argue the United States case in the Amistad affair. 
Seven Pennsylvania Attorneys General, each with a fascinating story.
Thomas Sergeant
John K. Kane
Lewis C. Cassidy
Hampton I. Carson
Moses Hampton Todd
William I Schaffer
William A. Schnader

ABC:LHS #008-3   Harriet Frishmuth...
...sculpted nubile women without the male gaze. Her favorite model was a Slovenian ballet dancer. Although her career was cut short by a fall, she lived to be 100 years old. Her sculptures will live far longer. 

ABC:LHS #008-2   Cecilia Beaux...
...was the daughter of a French silk merchant who abandoned her as an infant.  The household where she grew up was under the domain of several strong women, and Cecilia learned her lessons well.  Sometimes called "The Female John Singer Sergeant, she may be the only American woman painter to be mentioned in the same breath as Mary Cassatt.    

ABC:LHS #008-1   Alice Barber Stephens...
...was one of the top magazine illustrators in the country. Her work was in constant demand, even when she moved to the Rose Valley artists' colony.  

ABC:LHS #008
Alice Barber Stephens was one of the premiere magazine illustrators of the late 19th century
Cecilia Beaux was acknowledged in her day as one of the top portrait painters in the country
Harriet Frishmuth was a sculptor who lived to be 100 and whose art deco works continue to astound viewers 

ABC:LHS #007-Part 3    Harry Kalas...
...started his announcing career while with the Army in Hawaii. He became the voice of the Phillies, but the voice of NFL films, and the BART system in San Francisco.  His theme song was "High Hopes." You are probably humming it now.  

ABC:LHS #007-2   Al Reach...
...was a cricket player who took up baseball and became an equipment manufacturer and a club owner.  His name was on American League baseballs until the 1970s.
Benjamin Franklin "Ben" Shibe had been lamed by a trolley accident when he was a boy, so he didn't play much.  But he knew the game from a manager's perspective, and a state-of-the-art ballfield was named for him in North Philadelphia.

ABC:LHS #007-1   Harry Wright...
...was a cricket player from England who became enamored with baseball and worked to make it the professional game you expect today.  His statue stands over his grave at Laurel Hill West, and he has been voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. 

ABC:LHS #007   Play Ball!! (Part 2)
Professional baseball has a declared Founding Father, Hall of Famer Harry Wright. 
Since Philadelphia was one of the early cities to adopt the game, sporting goods manufacturers Ben Shibe and Al Reach took advantage of it.
If you listened to the Phillies on the radio, you knew the unmistakable voice of broadcast announcer Harry Kalas.
 
Wright, Shibe, and Reach are interred at Laurel Hill West, while Kalas is at East.

ABC:LHS #006-0
There are many father-and-son combinations buried at Laurel Hill including
Portrait artist Thomas Sully and his military son General Albert Sully
Generals Robert and Francis Patterson, both with somewhat tarnished military records
Gilded Age capitalist extraordinaire Peter A.B. Widener, and his son George and grandson Harry who went down on the RMS Titanic

ABC:LHS #005-4 Horace Trumbauer...
...had wanted to be an architect since he was a little boy.  He became the go-to architect for Philadelphia's Gilded-Age millionaires - Widener, Elkins, Stotesbury, Berwind, and many more.  He also designed the Public Library and the Art Museum.

ABC:LHS #005-3   Frank Furness...
...designed buildings unlike anyone else.  His buildings look like they're about to start moving like a giant steampunk machine.  The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is his surviving masterpiece.  

ABC:LHS #005-2   Napoleon LeBrun...
...was hired for two massive projects, both of which exist today more than 160 years later - The Academy of Music on South Broad and the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul at Logan Circle.

ABC:LHS #005-1   John Notman...
...was a Scottish immigrant who underbid seasoned pros for the contract at Laurel Hill.  To prove it wasn't a fluke, he went on to build The Athenaeum on Washington Square, Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, and much more. 

ABC:LHS #005   Four Architects...
John Notman: The Athenaeum, Laurel Hill Cemetery
Napoleon LeBrun: Academy of Music, Cathedral of Sts. Peter & Paul
Frank Furness: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, gatehouse at the Philadelphia Zoo
Horace Trumbauer: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Free Library of Philadelphia