| Lehigh County Historical Society Headquarters | |
| Coordinates: | 40.6022°N -75.4659°W |
| Established: | 1904 |
| Location: | 432 West Walnut Street, Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Type: | Historical museum |
| Director: | Joseph Garrera, M.A. |
| Curator: | Jill Youngken, M.A. |
| Publictransit: | LANta bus: 102, 107, 210, 220, 324 (at 5th and Hamilton/Linden streets) |
| Website: | http://www.lehighvalleyheritagemuseum.org |
Lehigh County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization, founded in 1904, dedicated to collecting, preserving, and exhibiting the history of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. The Historical Society and Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum are located at 432 West Walnut Street in Allentown.
The Lehigh County Historical Society is headquartered in the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum, a 30000square feet museum facility with four galleries and more than 10000square feet of exhibition space.[1] Recent exhibits have included exhibits on General Harry Clay Trexler, Native Americans, and U.S. presidents. The museum maintains an exhibit on the Lehigh Valley and an extensive collection of local and regional historical materials with more than 30,000 historical artifacts in its collection.
The Lehigh County Historical Society's library, the Scott Andrew Trexler II Research Library and Archive, houses 200,000 vintage photographs and nearly three million historical documents.[1] Included in its collections are more than 800 volumes of church and cemetery records for Lehigh and neighboring counties, early county records including tax rolls, wills and land deeds, indexed marriage records and announcements, 800 volumes of family genealogical histories, city directories from 1860 through the present, maps, census records, and published histories.[2] The library also maintains microfiche versions of several of Allentown's early German and English-language newspapers.[2] Access to the library is free for Society members; a small fee applies for non-members.
The Lehigh County Historical Society administers six historical sites in the region:
Proceedings, the journal of the Lehigh County Historical Society, was published on a bi-annual basis since 1906[3] and featured articles focusing on local and regional history. From 1947 to 1994, the publication was bound in a distinctive blue buckram hardcover binding with gilt lettering. In 1994, the journal was published in softcover. Publication of Proceedings was discontinued in 2004.