The State Museum of Pennsylvania presents an exhibition on the work of J. Horace McFarland (1859–1948), a pioneering environmentalist and early twentieth century Harrisburg civic leader.

J. Horace McFarland’s Harrisburg , which opens on Sunday, September 12, features approximately thirty photos from the State Archives’ J. Horace McFarland Collection depicting Harrisburg city from approximately 1900 – 1915.

Included with these images is a dramatization of “The Crusade Against Ugliness,” a slide show lecture typical of those McFarland gave on his national tours, showing images from cities all across America. It will be illustrated with the same slides used on these tours by McFarland himself, and narrated with the original text.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Harrisburg, like many cities, was still in the nineteenth. Major streets were unpaved; sewers were open and uncovered; the Susquehanna River’s banks were used as garbage dumps; and its drinking water unfiltered, leading to outbreaks of typhoid and cholera.

Along with the city’s other civic leaders, McFarland conducted a successful campaign in 1902 for a voting referendum for taxable bonds to be raised in the city’s treasury to correct this situation and additionally create parks and other beneficial improvements.

This “Harrisburg Plan,” as it became known, carried by McFarland across the nation in the form of lantern slide lectures, became a model for other cities’ “City Beautiful” projects. McFarland estimated that by 1911 he had given his lecture in over 400 cities across America.

McFarland, who later became known as the “Father of the National Park Service,” is celebrated this year by a number of Harrisburg organizations, including an exhibit and lecture series at the Historical Society of Dauphin County, and a “City Beautiful” show of artwork at the Art Association of Harrisburg.

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission published a biography of J. Horace McFarland called, A Thorn for Beauty by Ernest Morrison in 1995.

8/20/2004