Heritage Discovery Center

The Heritage Discovery Center, officially known as the Frank & Sylvia Pasquerilla Heritage Discovery Center, is a community history and culture center operated by the Johnstown Area Heritage Association (JAHA) in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The center features permanent and changing exhibits and galleries focusing on local history and culture. The building also features the Johnstown Children's Museum, a cafe and a social club.

Admission to the Center includes entry to all the exhibits and the Johnstown Children's Museum, and also includes one visit to all JAHA-owned museums in the Johnstown Discovery Network, including the Johnstown Flood Museum, and the Wagner–Ritter House & Garden, which is open seasonally.

Exhibits

"America: Through Immigrant Eyes" is a permanent exhibit about area immigrants who arrived between 1880 through 1914, mostly from Eastern and Southern Europe, and the ethnic neighborhoods in which they settled. The multimedia displays use sight, sound and smell to enable visitors to experience one person's daily life, starting from their country of origin and culture, to their travel to the United States to their lives and impact in the Johnstown area. A theatre features video interviews with the children and grandchildren of Johnstown immigrants.

The "Iron & Steel Gallery" focuses on the area steel industry. Exhibits include photographs and multi-media presentations.

The Heritage Discovery Center also features two galleries for changing exhibits of local history and culture.

Johnstown Children's Museum

The Johnstown Children's Museum is located on the Center's third floor. Interactive displays enable young children to learn Johnstown's geography, history, culture and industry through play.

History

The building was built in 1907 as a large brewery for the Germania Brewery Company, a local Johnstown brewery. Several brick buildings ringing an interior courtyard were constructed on Sixth Avenue. The tallest building stood five stories and contained the brew house, malting mill, keg dispensary and beer cellars. The bottling plant was located next to the two story brewery office, and a two story brick building housing the cooperage and warehouse stood next to the J.W. Walters Lumber Yard at the end of the courtyard. The Germania Brewery operated until 1919 when, with the advent of Prohibition, the company sold the building and its equipment to Louis Zang for $38,000. Shortly after, Zang sold the property to the Ferguson Packing Company, for one dollar.

The property passed through several hands before the Cambria County Sheriff seized the property in 1930. In 1946 the Morris Electric Supply Company acquired the buildings. This business continued until 1970 when it became the Morris Paper Company.

The Johnstown Area Heritage Association purchased the buildings in 1993. The building was identified as the new home for the Heritage Discovery Center because it was an important historic industrial structure tied to the culture of Cambria City, a classic ethnic working-class neighborhood that is listed as a National Historic District. After a renovation the buildings were opened as the Heritage Discovery Center in 2001. This renovation included the first two floors of the building. In 2008-2009, Phase II of the building's development was completed which included the renovations of the third, fourth and fifth floors, and the opening of the Johnstown Children's Museum, the Ethnic Social Club, Galliker's Cafe, and Iron & Steel Gallery.^[1][2]

References

External links

• Official website
• Heritage Discovery Center on Twitter

Coordinates: 40°20′24″N 78°55′52″W / 40.33994°N 78.93103°W / 40.33994; -78.93103