Nothing says Halloween like skulls and coffins! Join us for a spooky good time as we explore the history of death imagery in art. Memento mori (Latin for 'remember you must die') is an artistic or symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death, and was often expressed in art and jewelry with images of skulls, […]

Chester County History Center's Third Annual Halloween Ball! Join us for a Spooktacular night of fine foods and ghastly ghouls! About this event: The Spirits are Haunting, The Monsters will Crawl. It’s time to get ready, For Our Halloween Ball! Join Chester County History Center for a Spooktacular Evening featuring: live auction, music , costume contest, […]

The stories that abandoned homes tell captivate Robyn and Michael Hodgson. Over the past six years of traveling the northeast and exploring hundreds of abandoned locations, they have learned there is not one reason people vacate their homes. Then, there are the historical properties, mansions from the Colonial Era to the Victorian Era, still rich […]

Join Chester County History Center's curator Ellen Endslow to discuss thought provoking books and connect with others in the community. David Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir to produce a sweeping history—and counter-narrative—of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present. The story of American Indians since the end of the […]

Merry and bright? Goodwill toward men? Not so much. At least that's what research has revealed to author Matt Lake (Weird Pennsylvania, Night of the Krampus, and the forthcoming Christmas Night of the Living Dead). Marvel at the gruesome tales of the saints we celebrate during December, and the monsters that roam the hills and […]

The decades following the American Civil War burst with invention―they saw the dawn of the telephone, the motor car, electric lights, the airplane―but no innovation was more welcome than the beverage heralded as the “cocktail.” The Gilded Age, as it came to be known, was the Golden Age of Cocktails, giving birth to the classic […]