All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #085 for April 2026   Philadelphia's City Hall doubles as an art gallery and sculpture garden. More than 250 of Alexander Milne Calder's statues grace the massive walls of the building. But at ground level on the plaza outside the building there are seven more statues, two of them equestrian.  Matthias William Baldwin was a precision jeweler turned locomotive manufacturer who gave away most of his wealth. His factory manufactured 75,000 railroad engines before it closed down. John McArthur, Jr., was a Scottish architect who specialized in massive buildings. City Hall in its time was the largest building in the Western Hemisphere.  William Bullitt was a transplanted southern lawyer who believed in both slavery and secession, yet he was chosen to rewrite the city's constitution in the 1870s.  Samuel Perkins was the Director of the Public Buildings who ruled over the proceedings with an iron fist and was rewarded with a private joke in the south entry portico. 

Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories #054 for mid-March, 2026   Sophie Hutchinson Drinker (1888-1967) came from one Philadelphia blueblood family and married into another. She and her husband Harry led musical singing parties in their Merion home for 30 years. When Sophie started a woman's choir, she was frustrated in her search for music by, for, and about women. She made it her life's work to discover how woman had been shut out from their early roles in religion, medicine, and music. Her 1948 book Music & Women is a feminist classic. The Sophie Drinker Institute of Bremen Germany carries on women's music studies in her name and tradition. 

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #084, part 4 Emmy Lou "Clare" Linford Wofford was present at the creation of the United States Peace Corps, along with her husband Harris Wofford, one of John Kennedy's "Best and Brightest." While Harris served as college president and United States Senator, Clare served in the background at three Philadelphia Universities. 

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #084, part 3   Florence Cowanova (born Cowan in 1901) was the daughter of dancers Edward and Mary Cowan. On the suggestion of dancer Anna Pavlova, she adopted the surname Cowanova. Florence grew up immersed in dance, with her father specializing in kinesiology and her mother in dance instruction and publicity. By her teens, Florence was recognized as a versatile dancer and teacher, running a popular studio that staged large recitals at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, featuring hundreds of students. Thousands of Philadelphia girls fondly remember their sessions with Mme Cowanova, who made them all feel like princesses.   

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #084, part 2   Matilda "Tillie May" Forney, raised in a prominent Philadelphia family with journalistic roots, gained experience as her father’s secretary and became a columnist known for her “Fashionable Luncheon and Tea Toilets” column, which focused on high society fashion and etiquette. Her column catered to an affluent audience, discussing topics like French fabrics and social customs.  Tillie never married or left her family home on Washington Square. She was buried in her father’s plot at Laurel Hill West. Her life and career reflect both the opportunities and constraints faced by women journalists of her era.