Peter Crimmins | WHYY
WHYY’s arts and culture reporter Peter Crimmins first became interested in radio in the fourth grade, when he smuggled a contraband crystal-diode radio into the Boy Scout summer camp. Subsequent radio projects were more successful.
Crimmins has been reporting on arts and culture for WHYY News since 2010, as well as filing award-winning radio and print stories locally and nationally. He started his career in the San Francisco Bay Area, cutting his teeth at community station KALX and producing syndicated radio programming for Ben Manilla Productions. He lives in Fishtown with his wife and two dogs.
-
Archeologists have dug a three-quarter acre pit in Philadelphia along the Delaware River. They have uncovered the remains of an 18th century shipping wharf. WHYY’s Peter Crimmins reports they are preparing the ground for a major new residential development.
-
For the first time since Eastern State Penitentiary opened as a historic prison museum in 1998, visitors can go into death row. WHYY's Peter Crimmins reports the old Cell Block 15 is outfitted with speakers that play back a piece of music composed on a different death row.
-
A beloved Philadelphia area children's book author and illustrator who died last year will be honored with his own day on May 6: Floyd Cooper Day. WHYY's Peter Crimmins reports the national Children's Book Council is organizing events across the country to remember him.
-
The Philadelphia Police Department is moving to its new headquarters on North Broad Street, in the former Inquirer Newspaper Building. It comes with a new public sculpture: A police badge that's nine feet tall, hanging in a window.
-
A handful of Ukrainian hardcore punk bands have contributed music to a Philadelphia compilation album raising money for Ukraine. WHYY's Peter Crimmins listens to music from that war-torn country.
-
A new exhibition about the history of segregation in American public pools has re-opened at the Fairmount Waterworks in Philadelphia, five months after it was completely submerged by Hurricane Ida floodwaters.
-
After nearly two years of pandemic restrictions, smaller cultural organizations and historic sites have been honing their social media chops to get in front of people, at a time when many people cannot, or will not go to them. WHYY's Peter Crimmins reports one historic library in Philadelphia is working with an Instagrammer to tell its story.
-
Many of Philadelphia’s small arts organizations are at a crossroads, trying to reconcile how to keep their operations going with their missions. It comes as public and private emergency relief money is starting to dwindle as yet another viral surge sends COVID cases soaring. WHYY's Peter Crimmins reports.
-
The FBI returned fourteen historic guns to the museums from which they were stolen fifty years ago. Representatives from five different history organizations in southeast Pennsylvania gathered at the Museum of the American Revolution to have their weapons repatriated back to them. WHYY’s Peter Crimmins reports.
-
The surge of new COVID cases in the past two weeks has caused some last-minute changes to Philadelphia’s New Years' Eve plans. WHYY's Peter Crimmins reports.