Roger W. Moss (born January 31, 1940) is an historian, educator, administrator and author in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Throughout a long career he has also been an aggressive and entrepreneurial advocate for the preservation and authentic restoration of historic buildings. For forty years Moss directed the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, a special collections library near Independence Hall, and for 25 of those years he also taught in the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania. Early years Roger William Moss was born and raised in Zanesville, Ohio, the only child of Roger William and Dorothy Elizabeth Martin Moss. He received his B.S.Ed and M.A. degrees from Ohio University. During the summer of 1962 he was an assistant to the director of the Peace Corps staff preparing the first team destined for the Cameroon. While pursuing his Master of Arts degree he was curator of rare books at Ohio University Library which resulted in his first publications. In 1964 Moss accepted a teaching fellowship from The University of Delaware leading to his Ph.D. with a major in early American history and a minor in American Material Culture at Winterthur Museum. During the summer of 1966 he studied English country houses and collections as an Attingham Trust Fellow. and during the academic year 1967-68 he was an adjunct lecturer in history for the University of Delaware and the University of Maryland extension programs. Move to Philadelphia In 1968 Moss became the Executive Director of The Athenæum of Philadelphia, a member-supported library founded in 1814 and housed in a National Historic Landmark building near Independence Hall. During his four-decade tenure there he restored and expanded the building and reorganized the nearly moribund institution as an independent research library specializing in American architecture prior to 1930 and nineteenth-century material culture. Under his direction the research collections in architecture and Victorian-era design rapidly expanded, including the acquisition of the archives of numerous major American architects ranging from Thomas Ustick Walter (1804-1887) to Paul Philippe Cret (1876-1945). In 1969 Moss became a trustee of the Christopher Ludwick Foundation, one of Philadelphia's oldest philanthropic institutions founded in 1799 to advance the education of the poor children of Philadelphia. He would serve the foundation as an officer or trustee for forty-six years. When The Victorian Society in America was founded in 1966, Moss became an early board member and officer. He also capitalized on the explosion of