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Black Philadelphians have shaped Philadelphia history since colonial times. In Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape, Amy Cohen recounts notable aspects of the Black experience in Philadelphia from the late 1600s to the 1960s and how this history is marked in the contemporary city. She charts Charles Blockson’s efforts to commemorate the Pennsylvania slave trade with a historical marker and highlights Richard Allen, who founded Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church.

Cohen also describes the path to erecting a statue of civil rights activist Octavius Catto at Philadelphia’s City Hall and profiles international celebrities Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson who are honored in the city. At the end of each chapter, she includes suggestions to continue readers’ exploration of this important cultural heritage.

Showing how increased attention to the role of African Americans in local and national history has resulted in numerous, sometimes controversial, alterations to the landscape, Cohen guides readers to Black history’s significance and its connections with today’s spotlight on racial justice.

“Building ghosts” are the idiosyncratic remnants or imprints of demolished buildings, left behind on the sides of neighboring structures. Mostly seen in older Northeastern cities with rowhomes or party-wall adjacencies, they can reveal remarkable things, such as an old staircase going up the side of a building or plaster traces left by a set of shelves in an attic gable. As history in our changing cities is erased and remade, these ghosts can be ephemeral or enduring. They can be quickly revealed and replaced in a neighborhood seeing rapid change or unveiled and never re-covered in a neighborhood that has not seen new construction in a long time.

Building Ghosts features more than 100 striking contemporary color photographs and a deeply researched narrative about Philadelphia’s buildings, neighborhoods, and the ghosts that reveal new truths and provocations about the changing city. The text and images in this lavish volume illuminate these lost buildings and found ghosts. Building Ghosts is an invitation to see the city differently, with the past clinging visibly to the present.