I'm waiting on confirmation about my work schedule, but if all goes as planned, I'll be in East Stroudsburg next Monday to attend a marker dedication. So there's a strong likelihood that next week's post will be about that. I still haven't been able to get up to Schuylkill County as I'd hoped, although there's a good chance I'll be able to do that very soon.
Meanwhile, let's take a trip out west to Blair County and the historical downtown section of Altoona. Today's marker is one that I was actually not able to find - when husband Kevin and I were there last year for his birthday, we did search for this one, but had no luck with it. However, my pal Kaylee of the Shenandoah Sentinel was recently out that way and got pictures of it, which she very kindly shared with me, so she's joining the list of guest photographers today with her contribution to this post.
Like so many buildings commemorated on PHMC markers, the hotel called Logan House is long gone, but it has left its mark on history in a very singular fashion.
 |
| The marker is on the grounds of what is today the Altoona Parking Authority Garage, at the intersection of Ninth Street and Eleventh Avenue. Image courtesy of Kaylee Lindenmuth. |
The PRR recognized that they were going to be transporting a lot of commuters through the region, and dining cars on trains hadn't been invented yet. I wouldn't want to drive a car from one side of Pennsylvania to the other without stopping, and traveling by train takes even longer, so naturally people were going to get hungry and tired and want to take a break from the experience. The railroad could make even more money by providing an opportunity for its passengers to do just that, and so the ground broke for the hotel on July 6, 1852 - the first year that the PRR began running trains between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. PRR carpenter foreman Thomas Burchinelli directed his crew of 75 men to construct the hotel over the course of just a year.
Why it was named the Logan House is apocryphal. It's generally held that it was named in honor of Chief Logan, a Native American who had lived in the Altoona area during the previous century, but whether this is really the case remains unknown. Its large front porch almost earned it the name Verandah House. A head waiter would go out on the verandah when a passenger train arrived and hit the large Chinese gong there; this would tell passengers that they could go to the dining hall and enjoy a meal for all of twenty minutes before getting back on the train. The dining hall ran almost the entire length of the hotel, and was also used for balls and other social gatherings for locals.
Well, this is all very interesting, of course, but not of great historical significance. However, roughly a decade after the Logan House opened, that little kerfuffle known as the American Civil War broke out. Abraham Lincoln became President. The country was divided, and Pennsylvania - right on the Mason-Dixon Line - needed to act. Lincoln wanted to issue a proclamation declaring that slavery was abolished, but he was afraid that those border states which still allowed slavery would join the rebellion if he did. To provide him with necessary support, he needed the Union to win a decisive victory, and they did at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862. Thus encouraged, Lincoln wrote and issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22nd.
Our then-governor, Andrew Curtin, selected Altoona as the site of a great meeting between the Union governors, and the Logan House hosted the gathering. It was ideal for the purpose since the railroad lines could easily bring the other governors right to that huge verandah, and the whole thing took place in almost complete secrecy - the newspapers knew nothing of it. I can't find a specific reason why they kept it so hushed up, but I'm guessing they didn't want to make themselves a target of Confederate forces.
The gathering was known as the Loyal War Governors' Conference, and it took place on September 24th and 25th of 1862 - less than a year before the Battle of Gettysburg. Governors invited from the Union states began arriving a few days in advance, and the PRR took them on a complimentary visit to Horseshoe Curve while they waited for the rest to get there. The states whose governors were invited and able to attend, in addition to our own, were Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Michigan, Maryland, Iowa, Indiana, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Maine, Illinois, and Rhode Island. It's unknown exactly what was discussed throughout the entirety of the meeting, because in order to continue maintaining secrecy, they didn't have anyone taking minutes. As a result, the conference tends to be forgotten or ignored by a lot of Civil War historians - so if you didn't learn about this event in school (I didn't), that's why.
One thing we do know for sure, though, is that the governors held a vote on whether or not to approve and uphold the Emancipation Proclamation. All of them, except for the governor of Maryland (which still allowed slavery), voted yes. They then made a trip to Washington, D.C., where they presented their support to President Lincoln, promising in a jointly drafted statement that they would "continue in the most vigorous exercise of all our lawful powers, contending against treason, rebellion, and the public enemies until final victory and unconditional submission." They also offered Lincoln some suggestions for how to continue with the war effort, which he welcomed. The Proclamation was officially enacted on January 1, 1863.
Those governors who had been invited to the conference but unable to attend were sent a copy of the statement drafted by those in attendance. The governors of Vermont, Connecticut, Kansas, Minnesota, and Oregon all gave their approval; New York, New Jersey, Kentucky, Delaware, and Missouri voted no. The latter three states allowed slavery, so their downvotes are comprehensible, but why New York and New Jersey (which didn't) would have rejected the statement is a mystery to me.
As for the Logan House, it continued to provide exceptional service to PRR passengers and locals alike for several more decades. Among its more famous guests were many United States officials, including seven Presidents and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. The hotel also hosted many military generals, circus mogul P. T. Barnum, and the future King Edward VII, whose mother (Queen Victoria) sent him on a large tour of the United States as part of his education. However, the continued improvements on the Pennsylvania Railroad eventually included the addition of dining and sleeping cars, which ultimately rendered the hotel unnecessary. It closed on June 30, 1927, and was sold to the federal government a few years later.
Today, not a trace remains of the "Mansion in the Wilderness." It was used as a post office for a time, then demolished and replaced with a more modern post office on the same piece of land. The parking authority's garage occupies much of the site now. Only the blue and gold marker still stands, to remind us that there was once a glittering hotel in the midst of downtown Altoona, where thirteen men gathered to uphold the ideal that all people - regardless of their race - were created equal.
Sources and Further Reading:
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment
I would love to hear from you!