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Lehigh County Historical Society facts for kids

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Lehigh County Historical Society Headquarters
2008 - Lehigh Valley Heritage Center.jpg
Lehigh County Historical Society in June 2008
Established 1904
Location 432 West Walnut Street, Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Type Historical museum
Public transit access Bus transport LANta bus: 102, 107, 210, 220, 324 (at 5th and Hamilton/Linden streets)

Lehigh County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization, founded in 1904, dedicated to collecting, preserving, and exhibiting the history of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. The Historical Society and Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum are located at 432 West Walnut Street in Allentown.

Features

Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum

The Lehigh County Historical Society is headquartered in the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum, a 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) museum facility with four galleries and more than 10,000 square feet (930 m2) of exhibition space. Recent exhibits have included exhibits on General Harry Clay Trexler, Native Americans, and U.S. presidents. The museum maintains an exhibit on the Lehigh Valley and an extensive collection of local and regional historical materials with more than 30,000 historical artifacts in its collection.

Library and archive

2008 - Allentown Trout Hall
Now one of the sites administered by the Lehigh County Historical Society, Trout Hall served as the organization's home for many years.

The Lehigh County Historical Society's library, the Scott Andrew Trexler II Research Library and Archive, houses 200,000 vintage photographs and nearly three million historical documents. Included in its collections are more than 800 volumes of church and cemetery records for Lehigh and neighboring counties, early county records including tax rolls, wills and land deeds, indexed marriage records and announcements, 800 volumes of family genealogical histories, city directories from 1860 through the present, maps, census records, and published histories. The library also maintains microfiche versions of several of Allentown's early German and English-language newspapers. Access to the library is free for Society members; a small fee applies for non-members.

Historic sites

PA-LEHIGH-TroxellSteckelHouseFrontSide
Built in 1756, the Troxell-Steckel House, administered by the Lehigh County Historical Society and open to the public, is one of the oldest buildings in Lehigh County.

The Lehigh County Historical Society administers six historical sites in the region:

See also

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