Holmesburg Prison | Photo: Chandra Lampreich

We’re going to celebrate the first anniversary of the Hidden City Daily by taking off this Labor Day Weekend. We won’t publish Friday, August 31 or Monday, September 3. We’ll be featuring some special stories and projects in commemoration of the anniversary, including a “Meet the Contributors” night. And we’ve saved one extraordinary building to explore and dream about its future…stay tuned.

You can help us celebrate by becoming a Hidden City member today. Membership is our way of including you in the wide (and hopefully deep) conversation we’re having about this city, its past and its future. If you love imagining and exploring the city as much as we do and want to join us as we present a menu of tours and special events leading up to the 2013 Festival, join now.

For all the details about personal and corporate memberships, click HERE.

I personally urge you to join us. The more of us involved the stronger our writing and reporting will be…the more interesting and exciting the tours and events…the more brilliant the Festival.

It won’t cost you much, but it will sustain us as we attempt to prove that this kind of smart, high quality journalism can work. If you care about architecture and design, planning, landscape, photography, industrial history, historic preservation, urban exploring, iconic buildings and architects, and real estate development, and if you desire insight and analysis and great photography–and passion!–the Daily is the right place for you.

Photo: Peter Woodall

In one year, we’ve published more than 800 stories, including:

Breaking stories on the Buck Hosiery fire, Eric Blumenfeld and the Divine Lorraine, the Frankford Creek greenway, the rise of the Post Brothers, Third Ward locating to Philly, Frankford Avenue development, the Barnes Foundation Coney Island floor…

Leading coverage on Post Brothers’ showdown with trade unions, Philadelphia’s broken system of historic preservation, the long struggle to create Hawthorne Community Park, architectural misfirings at the Museum of the American Revolution, and reinventing Philadelphia’s industrial architecture…

Great discussions about the City Branch railway, SEPTA and sustainability, the Divine Lorraine, lost landscapes and gardens, and contemporary architecture…

Insight on changing Northern Liberties, ambitious zoning changes in the Lower Northeast, green design at PHA, the future of the Gretz Brewery, ending the long struggle between the City and SEPTA, endangered murals, changes on 52nd Street, and transforming the Reading Viaduct…

Dozens of stories on Philly’s architects and their buildings, including our bi-weekly column The Shadow Knows…

The infinite Harry K’s Encyclopedia…

Extraordinary photo coverage of the Norris Street banks, the Divine Lorraine, the SS United States, Art Deco buildings, SEPTA’s “nerve center,” and the Boyd Theater…

Your membership keeps our writers and photographers exploring. It might just help all of us think about and inhabit this city a little differently. Join us today!

And thanks for a helluva year!