Timeline of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania history

This is a timeline of the major events in the history of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and vicinity.

1889 Map of Harrisburg City

Early America

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19th century

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20th century

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Share of the Harrisburg Railways Company, issued 15. July 1916
    • The transit company reorganized as "Harrisburg Railways".[6]
    • Dock Street Dam is completed on the Susquehanna River
  • 1914
    • City Beautiful continues, raises money with bonds (Eggert 338).
    • City library opened.[clarification needed]
  • 1915 Great Migration brings many black workers to Harrisburg's steel mills
  • 1916
  • 1918 Penn-Harris Hotel constructed (demolished in 1973)
  • 1919 African-American YMCA branch established.
  • 1920 The last trolleys were acquired.[6]
  • 1921 Island Park bathing beach has 235,000 visitors per year.
  • 1924
    • First radio station begins to broadcast.
    • Decline in trolley ridership began on both sides of the river.[6]
  • 1926
    • City Beautiful related projects, costing $250,000.
    • Market Street Bridge widened from two lanes to four.
  • 1926-30 State Street Bridge built: part of the Capitol complex.
  • 1929-1939 The Great Depression
  • 1930 Bus service replaces trolley on the Carlisle to Mechanicsburg line west of the river.[6]
  • 1931 Pennsylvania's Canal era ends (1792–1931). Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra first plays.
  • 1933
    • YMCA Central Branch opens on Front Street.
    • Three trolley lines replaced by buses: Ten buses placed in service.[6]
    • Hotel Hershey opens.
    • African-American YMCA branch builds Forster Street Branch.
  • 1934 Bethesda Mission acquires building at 611 Reily Street from the PA Railroad YMCA.
  • 1937
    • Hershey strike put down.
    • The trolley company changed to Harrisburg Railways Company and remained in use until 1973.[6]
  • 1938 All remaining trolley lines on west shore abandoned.[6]
  • 1939 July 16: Buses replace trolleys in Harrisburg. The last Harrisburg Railways Trolley closed. A fleet of 135 buses remained under the Harrisburg Railways Company.[6]
  • 1939-73 Bus service continued but riders lessened due to more auto ownership (Capitol Area Transit).
  • 1941 Mansion of John Harris, Jr., and later Lincoln's first Secretary of War Simon Cameron becomes home of Historical Society of Dauphin County.
  • 1943
  • 1947 Merchant's and Men's Mutual Insurance moves to Front St.
  • 1949 Pennsylvania national insurance group moves to new HQ on Derry St.
  • 1950 89,554 people live in Harrisburg: Largest Standard Metropolitan Area population in city's history. Harrisburg Standard Metropolitan Area (SMA), consisting of Cumberland and Dauphin counties, was first defined.
  • 1952 Harvey Taylor Bridge opens to help traffic to west shore. Forster Street widened.
  • 1953 Hall Manor built.
  • 1956 Old Central Iron and Steel demolished for the anticipated John Harris Bridge.
  • 1958
    • Dock Street and several streets are razed and 150 houses in Shipoke demolished for the anticipated John Harris Bridge.
    • IBM builds branch in Mechanicsburg, west of the river.
  • 1959
    • Following a term change by the Bureau of the Budget (present-day Office of Management and Budget), the Harrisburg SMA became the Harrisburg Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA).
    • Urban renewal leads to the elimination of streets and houses around Midtown and Fox Ridge between North Sixth and Seventh streets for commercial redevelopment.
  • 1960
    • Historic governor's mansion demolished for a parking lot.
    • John Harris Bridge on the river opened.
    • The Jackson-Lick projects, consisting of the C. Sylvester Jackson and Alton W. Lick towers, are built.
  • 1960s Olmstead Air Force Base closed.
  • 1961 Harrisburg Expressway opened: Paxton Street to Hampden Township on the West Shore, via the John Harris Bridge.
  • 1963 Perry County added to the Harrisburg SMSA.
  • 1964 Commonwealth of PA razed the Forster Street Branch YMCA for government expansion
  • 1966
    • Penn State opened campus[8] on former Olmstead AFB.
    • The former Forster Street Branch YMCA occupies the newly constructed Camp Curtin Branch YMCA on 2135 North 6th Street.
  • 1969 Protests and turmoil referred to as the "race riots" occur in the summer amid racial tensions among black and white communities[9]
  • 1972 Severe flooding resulting from Hurricane Agnes.
  • 1973
    • Urban renewal demolished the Penn-Harris Hotel (built in 1918).
    • Public bus service acquired by the city from the Harrisburg Railways Company.[6]
  • 1974 Construction of the Cumberland Court apartments in Fox Ridge begins starting with the elimination of Cumberland Street east of Third Street, Hay Street, and Montgomery Streets.
  • 1983 Harrisburg SMSA renamed the Harrisburg–Lebanon–Carlisle Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)[3]; Lebanon County added to the MSA.
  • 1996 Collapse of the West Shore portion of the Walnut Street Bridge as a result of rising flood waters from the North American blizzard of 1996.

21st century

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  • 2003 MSA split into two separate metropolitan areas – Harrisburg–Carlisle metropolitan statistical area (Cumberland, Dauphin, and Perry counties) and the Lebanon Metropolitan Statistical Area (Lebanon County); both MSAs together form the Harrisburg–Carlisle metropolitan statistical area.
  • 2010
    • After upset in the primary elections over long-time mayor Stephen R. Reed, first female and first black mayor Linda D. Thompson took office in January.
    • The Harrisburg-York-Lebanon urban agglomeration area is defined for the first time, linking York County to the CSA.
  • 2011 After filing for bankruptcy, a state-appointed receiver (William B. Lynch) took control of the City finances.
  • 2013 Receiver Lynch released his comprehensive voluntary plan and it was enacted, where the budget became balanced again in the late 2010s.
  • 2018 Mayor Eric R. Papenfuse began Vision Zero strategy for Harrisburg to eliminate pedestrian fatalities through more intelligent street planning.[10]
  • 2020 Mayor Eric Papenfuse restructured the Harrisburg Bureau of Police to separately house its new Community Services Division and created new Community Service Aide positions in continued efforts to improve community policing.[11]
  • 2022 Final payment of $125.6 million in debt (including interest) incurred by former mayor Stephen Reed in 1997 from Series D and F bonds was finally repaid after 25 years, setting the City up to be debt free the following year.[12]
  • 2023 A severe fire caused by a Rite-Hite HVLS ceiling fan tore through the brick building of the Broad Street Market, nearest to 6th Street, in the early morning hours of July 10, 2023 causing major damage to the roof and a loss of the building contents.[13]

References

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  1. ^ Egle, William (1883). Illustrated history of the commonwealth of pennsylvania, civil, political : from its ... (3rd ed.). Philadelphia: E. M. Gardner. p. 639. ISBN 1-2861-7074-5.
  2. ^ "Parson John Elder House Historical Marker". www.hmdb.org. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  3. ^ a b "The First Newspaper Published in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 10 (3): 251–255. 1886. ISSN 0031-4587. JSTOR 20083145.
  4. ^ Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 to 1990, U.S. Census Bureau, 1998
  5. ^ Barton, Michael (1998). Life by the moving road : an illustrated history of greater Harrisburg. American Historical Press. OCLC 1245295169.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Capital Area Transit (2012). "History of Transit in the Harrisburg Area". Capital Area Transit. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA.
  7. ^ Barton, Michael (2020). "Before the City Was Beautiful". Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies. 87 (1): 92–96. doi:10.5325/pennhistory.87.1.0092. ISSN 0031-4528. JSTOR 10.5325/pennhistory.87.1.0092. S2CID 214225082.
  8. ^ "Campus Fact Sheet" (PDF). Penn State Harrisburg.
  9. ^ "Lessons linger from Harrisburg's 1969 summer of racial turmoil". pennlive. 2019-06-21. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  10. ^ "About the Project". Vision Zero Harrisburg. 2018-06-27. Retrieved 2021-07-28.
  11. ^ "21 civilian positions included in Harrisburg budget to create new police Community Services Division". pennlive. 2020-11-25. Retrieved 2021-11-17.
  12. ^ "Harrisburg makes final payment on bond spanning 25 years, hopes to be debt free by year's end". TheBurg. 2022-09-09. Retrieved 2022-09-12.
  13. ^ "Fire engulfs building at Harrisburg's Broad Street Market". PennLIVE. 10 July 2023. Retrieved 12 July 2023.

Further reading

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  • Eggert, Gerald G. Harrisburg industrializes: the coming of factories to an American Community (1993) 412 pages
  • Ries, Linda A. Harrisburg (2006) excerpt and text search
  • Seitz, Blair. Harrisburg: renaissance of a capital city (Historic Harrisburg Association, 2000)