Credits
Land Acknowledgement
The work for this project was largely conducted at Bryn Mawr College. The land on which Bryn Mawr College and Germantown YWCA stand on is part of the ancestral homeland and territory of the Lenape people. We openly recognize the Lenape Indian tribe as the original inhabitants of eastern Pennsylvania. We acknowledge the Lenape people as the indigenous stewards of their homelands and also the spiritual keepers of the Lenape Sippu, or Delaware River, and we do hereby commit to actively supporting our Lenape [siblings] in whatever way we are able, helping to maintain the cultural identity of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and southern New York.
About the Project
Germantown YWCA: A Social History of a Building is an ongoing collaborative project aimed to preserve the Philadelphia neighborhood’s rich history, to nurture community relationships, and to share stories of the many people involved with the building and the organization. The intention is to create an interactive website to educate the public about “the Y” and understand the critical significance of the civic center in enriching and grounding the Germantown community.
“Social history” refers to a foregrounding of the social relations that constitute the building’s significance over time. The term was first coined as a reaction to the kinds of history that centered “great men” as figures who caused and willed change. “Social histories” represent how historical events are part of a large context of people, communities, and societies. The idea is that a historical event is a result of many different social forces, actors, and everyday people. In this project, then, the focus is on the everyday people — often women — who used, lived and worked in and near the building, and many who hold memories of the place.
Pedagogy
The project was first conceived in 2022 by the Praxis office at Bryn Mawr College through Dr. Liv Raddatz’s engagement with the Friends for the Restoration of the Germantown YWCA Building, led by Germantown resident, Ann Doley. Bryn Mawr students initially put together a survey of residents about the current and future of the building, discovering community members willing to share their memories and stories. Slowly, the project evolved through courses on preservation taught by Professor Min Kyung Lee from the Department of the Growth and Structure of Cities to train students in conducting oral histories and archival research, as well as understanding the complex issues around preservation. This led to a collaboration with the Educational and Scholarly Technology team led by Dr. Alice McGrath, who trained and supported students in conceiving, coding, and designing the website and visualization features that exhibit the research on the building, while teaching students about broader issues of data stewardship, copyrights, data ethics, and digital humanities. From a teaching and learning perspective, this has been an ideal opportunity to understand the collaborations across disciplinary skills and knowledge inherent to liberal arts education. Architecture, planning, history, anthropology and computer science students work together on a project that has an immediate community impact with residents who have social and political stakes in their research. From the community perspective, working with young people from all over the country and world has allowed for the community of YWCA stakeholders to grow. This partnership has helped to advocate for this significant landmark, and brought recognition of the value and agency these residents have had and continue to have in Germantown.