Philadelphia Architecture from 1700-1940

[City Streets]

.........hammersklavier.............

Wish I could find a picture ( that I could transfere and post ) of
Recreation Pier .

a lot of grand old architecture disappeared in the name of progress .
Don't get me wrong , I'm all for progress . I just wish the prevailing
powers ( at the time ) could have figured out a way to preserve or
work around such fine art work .

The history of such buildings , help us to appreciate the talent and
legacy of diversification.....for what it's worth , in my opinion .

[City Streets]

[/IMG]



Queen Anne home in West Philadelphia .

[City Streets]

Victorian style row home in Cedar Park Philly .

[Swinefeld]

Spruce Street Row, c. 1885 by William D. and George W. Hewitt.

Photo credit: Swinefeld

Wallowing blissfully in an abundance of distorted Queen Anne idioms.

[City Streets]

Ok . You win , I surrender .
Fantastic shot . Do you know if it is a single family , office business
or multi dwelling at this time ??

[Swinefeld]

I was first intended to be a row of houses but now I believe it's managed by Campus Apartments as student housing. Maybe someone can verify this.

I'll post another picture of the divine Spruce Street Row. The building on the extreme left is pretty historic in its own right, it was the home of 19th century financier Clarence H. Clark Jr.


Photo credit: Swinefeld

[PhillyRising]

Swinery, Interesting pics of the interior of the Union League.

I was waiting to see if the two old guys from "Trading Places" would still be sitting in there!

[volguus zildrohar]

Swines, good to run into you at the Union League. The building is absolutely magnificent. I know it's a private club but if the building were open for tours more, during tourist season particularly, it would shine a little more light on nother great Philadelphia space.

[bucks native]

photo credit Library Company of Philadelphia



(Arcadia Publishing, Fall 2006)

128 pp., illustrated (bw), soft cover

Using the Library Company’s rich photographic holdings, this book contains 195 photographs illustrating the buildings, people, and activities of 19th-century Center City Philadelphia. The book’s ten thematic chapters include Religious Institutions, Money and Trade, Urban Transit, Business and Industry, and Cultural Institutions.

Details:

Philadelphia, as laid out in the 1680s, extended from the Delaware River to the Schuylkill River and from Vine Street to South Street, an area known today as Center City. As its population grew, the settled areas expanded westward from the Delaware River beyond early important landmarks such as Christ Church, the Pennsylvania State House, and Pennsylvania Hospital. By the mid-19th century, commercial, religious, and cultural institutions arose along Broad Street, and exclusive residential neighborhoods developed even farther west in areas previously undeveloped or used as industrial sites. Bustling shopping districts anchored by stores such as Wanamaker’s Grand Depot and Strawbridge and Clothier ran for blocks along Chestnut and Market Streets. Center City Philadelphia in the 19th Century highlights the buildings, people, and activities of this area from the 1840s until the end of the century.

Travel the streets of 19th-century Center City as documented by the photographers whose works are preserved in the rich collections of the Library Company of Philadelphia, a rare book and research library founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731. The authors of Center City Philadelphia in the 19th Century are staff members of the Library Company’s Print and Photograph Department.

The Images of America series celebrates the history of neighborhoods, towns, and cities across the country. Using archival photographs, each title presents the distinctive stories from the past that shape the character of the community today. Arcadia is proud to play a part in the preservation of local heritage, make history available to all.

Return to www.librarycompany.org (store)

[bucks native]

Butcher and Singer



Photo credit: Atiya Walker-Dykes


Fogo de Chao



Photo credit: kudzu.com



Photo credit: farm2



Union Trust






Photo and render credits: foobooz.com



Del Frisco's



AMANDA CEGIELSKI / Inquirer Staff Photographer
Del Frisco’s private dining room, 15th and Chestnut, is an old bank vault seating 100.



Photo credit: Inquirer


full read here: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/colum...locations.html

Fri, Feb. 20, 2009

Changing Skyline: Grade-A prime locations
The city's old banks, with their beefy-big and well-marbled spaces, are perfect for new steak houses.

By Inga Saffron
Inquirer Architecture Critic

Inside Del Frisco's new Chestnut Street steak house, the world is scaled to the size of a Texas steer.

Waiters hoisting platters of 48-ounce rib eyes amble through an old-growth forest of three-story limestone columns, topped by thick slabs of sculpted plaster.

The afternoon light rakes through 20-foot-high brass-trimmed windows as a tide of Market Street business types drifts toward the sinuous coastline of its 30-seat bar.

Most cities don't have a train station that can match the immensity and grandeur of this room, which started life as a First Pennsylvania Bank branch, never mind such a stunning setting for a chophouse chain. Yet Del Frisco's has eased into the setting as if it were to the manor born, retrofitting the triple-lined underground vault, where stacks of safe-deposit boxes once cradled the jewels and stock certificates of Philadelphia's elite, with floor-to-ceiling wine racks.

And to think that, only a few short years ago, some people wanted to turn the space into a drugstore.

Like so many other magnificent interiors bequeathed to Philadelphia by long-vanished financial institutions, the bank in the base of the Packard Building, at 15th Street, sat unloved and unwanted. The city's position as a major financial center diminished after the Great Depression, leaving behind marble memories of its banking prowess.

For decades, no one could figure out how to reuse those big, unwieldy spaces, with their encrustations of florettes and dentil moldings. But thanks to the steak-house mania sweeping Philadelphia, and apparently the rest of our beef-loving nation, interiors with great architectural bones are suddenly in high demand here.

Other downtowns have also seen swarms of steak houses, but few have been able to offer the same wealth of bank buildings as Philadelphia.

So, one by one, steak-house operators have smoked out the city's forgotten interiors, designed by the likes of Horace Trumbauer and Paul Philippe Cret.

The great spaces that have started to exude the scent of grilling meat include Union Trust, which opened last week in the lavishly renovated eponymous bank on the 700 block of Chestnut, a Cret project from the mid-1920s that foreshadows his work on Chestnut Street's Federal Reserve Bank. It's hard to believe that such a breathtaking space had been empty or ill- used since the 1960s.

Then there's Fogo de Chão Churrascaria in J.E. Caldwell's old spot on Chestnut's 1300 block; Butcher & Singer, which takes its name from the brokerage house at 1500 Walnut; and Barclay Prime, ensconced in the library that served the old Rittenhouse Square hotel. If you go back further, you can add the Palm at the Bellevue.

Few preservationists foresaw the healing power of red meat. After years trying to save the city's great interiors through legislation, tax breaks, and subsidies, they are as surprised as anyone to discover that the ubiquitous steak house is now an effective tool for preservation.

Mark Mednansky chose the location in the Packard Building, designed by Ritter & Shay in 1924, because it offered the most opulent space in the most strategic location.

Because City Council has never passed a law protecting historic interiors, Del Frisco's was not obliged to restore the bank's elaborate decor. But it's well known that steak houses compete more on ambience than food. The peculiar economics of the steak-house formula combines a large room with many seats and bustling bars with a decor that feels clubby.

Mednansky said the company recognized that the Packard bank's rich features were an asset that would pay back the firm's investment. Though his architect, Chicago's Aumiller Youngquist, inserted a new mezzanine and 32-foot-tall wine tower, the sensitive additions respect the original.

Still, the recent renovations didn't come cheap. Del Frisco's spent $10 million to adapt the 23,000-square-foot interior for its 550-seat restaurant, now the largest steak house in Philadelphia and in the chain, Mednansky said. The space is almost 50 percent bigger than the Manhattan location, which claims to be the world's highest-grossing steak house.

The immense size of these old banks is a big reason so many have lain fallow here.

"The amount of money you have to invest in renovations only makes sense in the case of a high-volume steak house," said Joseph Grasso, David's brother and the developer behind the rival Union Trust. (He also owns a share of the Packard.)

His group spent $14 million to return Union Trust to Cret's 1920s ideal, a mingling of neoclassical ornament and modernist restraint. Like Del Frisco's, its main dining room is vast, with a 45-foot-high vaulted ceiling.

The developers even preserved the basement vaults, including the steel rails used to move carts of gold bullion stored by the Federal Reserve. Since steak houses are apparently Philadelphia's new cash cow, it's appropriate that hunks of dry-aging beef have replaced gold bricks in the vaults. Union Trust, incidentally, will employ a force of 200 - the same number Unisys promised when it was considering a move downtown.

Not only did Grasso have DAS Architects restore the interior to federal preservation standards, they also peeled away an earlier tenant's messy layers of stucco and marble, which obscured the exterior's elegant pilasters and huge windows. Unlike the murky, male-dominated chophouses that once lined Camac Street, Union Trust glows with a soft natural light, in the hope of enticing more women as customers.

Attracting more women was a big motivation behind the decor at Stephen Starr's Butcher & Singer and Barclay Prime. The restaurateur had Los Angeles designer India Mondavi lighten Butcher & Singer's dark paneled space with ample drapery, taupe plaids, and whimsical murals that are intended to evoke a sexy, 1940s-Hollywood glamour. It's an ironic glamour, presided over by a golden calf.

Softening up the venerable, hard-surfaced bank spaces is essential for steak houses, Wolf said. "An old bank is designed for people to stand in line. But a steak house needs a room that feels dynamic and exclusive."

Some predict that the bumper crop of steak houses will soon be burned by the economic crisis, just as the banks that built these soaring spaces in the '20s were done in by the Depression.

If that does happen, Philadelphia can at least take solace in knowing it stands to inherit a collection of freshly renovated historic spaces, all primed for the next trend.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contact architecture critic Inga Saffron at 215-854-2213 or isaffron@phillynews.com.

[bucks native]

While you guys were in The Union League, were you permitted to tour the gym or go upstairs?

A few years back, during a meeting in Philadelphia of neurosurgeons, I was to a dinner at The Union League, and sat with two wild neurosurgeons from the Cleveland Clinic.

After dinner, they wanted to see the place - the whole place. So we asked the ancient coatman what we should see. He told us to check out the gym in the basement. Wow! Pristene, but it looked like it must have in 1900. Original scale, that I was certain Teddy Roosevelt had used. How about the bar? Did they let you into the bar? Dark and meant only for manly men with great wall murals. Then we went upstairs to check the private rooms. Locked, of course. But the door to the roof wasn't locked. So up we went and out onto the roof. It was night. Surrounded by taller buildings - each aglow - except for the front on Broad Street which glowed as well. Magnificent.

[bucks native]

Photo credit: theconstitutional.com

825 Walnut Street

Founded in 1809, the Walnut Street Theatre is the oldest theatre in America and the oldest playhouse in continuous use in the English-speaking world.

[bucks native]

Declaration (Graff) House




Photo credit: ushistory.org




Photo credit: theconstitutional.com


In June of 1776, Thomas Jefferson was part of a Virginia delegation that planned to ask the Second Continental Congress to sever its ties from Great Britain. While that historic body was meeting, Jefferson was assigned to a committee that was asked to write a declaration which enumerated the causes that led to the severance of ties with Great Britain. Finding his lodging in the heart of the city uncomfortable, he removed to the rooms of Jacob Graff. Graff was a well-known bricklayer who had built his house on the outskirts of town but a year before Jefferson arrived. It's probable that Jefferson had to pay a little extra for the rooms as they came furnished. The Graffs lived in the house while Jefferson undertook his task. Situated on the outskirts of town, surrounded by fields and a stable across the street, the house provided Jefferson with the space and distance from the city he needed for his task. Working from the Virginia Constitution as well as an extensive knowledge of political theory Jefferson wrote the document in under three weeks. An author at heart, Jefferson squirmed in resentment as the document was redacted during the final week of June 1776 by his fellow delegates to the Second Continental Congress.

Stable across the street attracted horseflies which Jefferson complained about while writing the Declaration of Independence.

The site became among other things a print shop and a Tom Thumb diner.

Jefferson had an account at the City Tavern while writing the Declaration.

The house was once owned by Hyman and Simon Gratz. Their sister, Rebecca, was the inspiration for Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe" and Thackeray's "Rebecca."

Location: 7th and Market (Map)
Originally built: 1775
Architect: Jacob Graff
Style: Georgian
Commissioned by: Jacob Graff, bricklayer

[bucks native]

First Bank of The United States




Photo credit: theconstitutional.org



First Bank of the United States, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
(Independence National Historical Park Collection)

Location: 116 South Third Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Owner: Independence National Historical Park
Condition: Excellent, altered, original site

Period: 1700-1799
Builder/Date: Samuel Blodgett, 1797

DESCRIPTION

The First Bank of the United States—originally called the Bank of the United States—operated from 1797-1811, on Third Street, midway between Chestnut and Walnut streets. Samuel Blodgett, Jr., merchant, author, publicist, promoter, architect, and "Superintendent of Buildings" for the new capital in Washington, DC, designed the building in 1794. At its completion in 1797, the bank won wide acclaim as an architectural masterpiece. By today's standards the building remains a notable early example of Classical monumental design.

The bank is a three-story brick structure with a marble front and trim. It measures 90' 11" across the front by 81' 9". Its seven-bay marble facade, with the large 48' x 11' Corinthian hexastyle portico, is the work of Claudius F. LeGrand and Sons, stone workers, woodcarvers and guilders. The remarkably intact portico tympanum, restored in 1983, contains elaborate mahogany carvings of a fierce-eyed eagle grasping a shield of thirteen stripes and stars and standing on a globe festooned with an olive branch. The restored hipped roof is covered in copper—some of which, over the portico, is original—and has a balustrade along its four sides.

When the first charter of the Bank of the United States lapsed in 1811, Stephen Girard purchased the building and opened his own bank, Girard Bank, in 1812. Although at Girard's death in 1832 the building was left in trust to the City of Philadelphia, the Girard Bank continued in operation there until 1929, covering a 117-year occupancy. In 1902 the Girard Bank hired James Windrim, architect, to remodel the interior. Windrim removed the original barrel vaulted ceiling and introduced a large skylight over a glass-paned dome to furnish more light for the first floor tellers. He altered the original hipped roof further with the introduction of a shaft tower on the west side of the building for an elevator. Between 1912 and 1916 Girard Bank also constructed a two-story addition on the west facade of the building.

After being vacated in 1929, the bank building languished until the National Park Service purchased it in 1955 as part of Independence National Historical Park. Between 1974 and 1976 the Park restored the building's eighteenth century exterior appearance and retained its 1902 interior remodeling, leaving an 86' x 67' banking room on the first floor and numerous smaller rooms—used as park offices and library space—around its outer perimeter on the second and third floors. The central area is defined by a circular Corinthian columned rotunda on the first and second floors and an electrically lit glass dome at the third floor level. The cellar retains its 1795 stone-walled and brick-vaulted rooms, some still having their original sheet iron vault doors.

ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE

The First Bank of the United States is also architecturally significant. Designed by Samuel Blodgett with Joseph P. LeGrand as marble mason, the First Bank was probably the first important building with a classic facade of marble to be erected in the United States. Although somewhat changed by subsequent alterations, the exterior of the building is today essentially as it was in 1795, the date of the earliest drawing and description uncovered so far. Unfortunately, lack of documentation and extensive alterations perpetrated in 1901-02 leaves knowledge of the interior inadequate.

[bucks native]

Second Bank of The United States




Photo credit: theconstitutional.com

420 Chestnut Street

Completed in 1824, the Second Bank of the United States is one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture, modeled on the Parthenon in Greece. The Second Bank was designed by William Strickland who was known as the "city architect" because he created a large number of Philadelphia's public buildings. The Second Bank was incorporated in 1816, and it was one of the most influential financial institutions in the world until 1832. Today, the building houses a collection of late 18th and early 19th Century portraits.

[bucks native]

Pennsylvania Hospital




Photo credit: bigbustours.com



The Pine Building's Great Hall
Credit: Pennsylvania Hospital

The Nation's First Hospital

Pennsylvania Hospital was founded in 1751 by Dr. Thomas Bond and Benjamin Franklin "to care for the sick-poor and insane who were wandering the streets of Philadelphia." At the time, Philadelphia was the fastest growing city in the 13 colonies. In 1730, the population numbered 11,500 and had grown to 15,000 by 1750 (the city continued to grow and by 1776, its 40,000 residents made Philadelphia the second largest English-speaking city in the British Empire).

The docks and wharves along the Delaware River teemed with activity as ships bound for foreign ports loaded up with flour, meat and lumber while overseas vessels delivered European-manufactured goods and wines. Foreign visitors noted with envy the city's growing prosperity. Although the majority of the population was neither extremely wealthy nor extremely poor, there was a significant increase in the number of immigrant settlers who were "aged, impotent or diseased."

At the time, colonial America's urban centers were far healthier than their European counterparts. Nevertheless, the Philadelphia region, according to city leaders of the day, was "a melting pot for diseases, where Europeans, Africans and Indians engaged in free exchange of their respective infections." Faced with increasing numbers of the poor who were suffering from physical illness and the increasing numbers of people from all classes suffering from mental illness, civic-minded leaders sought a partial solution to the problem by founding a hospital.

From early 1752 until the east wing of the Pine Building opened in 1755 Pennsylvania Hospital was housed in the home of recently deceased John Kinsey, a Quaker and Speaker of the Assembly.

So pleased was Franklin that he later stated: "I do not remember any of my political manoeuvres, the success of which gave me at the time more pleasure..."

To illustrate the purpose of the hospital, the inscription "Take care of him and I will repay thee" was chosen and the image of the Good Samaritan was affixed as the hospital seal.

Timeline:

May 11, 1751
Charter is granted to establish Pennsylvania Hospital.

1752
Temporary hospital established and Elizabeth Gardner, a Quaker widow, is appointed matron.

1753
First patients admitted on February 11.

1754
Hospital's first plot of land purchased from the Penn family.

1755
Benjamin Franklin writes the cornerstone for the east wing of the Pine Building.

1756
The hospital starts admitting patients in the 8th and Pine Streets facility.

1767
Thomas and Richard Penn donate property to give the hospital the entire square between Spruce and Pine Streets and 8th and 9th Streets.

1796
Construction of the second wing of the hospital, the west wing, is completed.

1804
Construction of the third wing, the center section, is completed and the surgical ampitheatre opens.

[City Streets]

Great job .
Enjoyed both the pics and the info . Thanks for posting .
The private dining room at Del Frisco's , is a hoot .

[bucks native]

Streets - snowstorm here. Stuck inside. This is fun.


First:



Render credit: swarthmore.edu

In 1888, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange moved to the Drexel Building which was located on the east side of Fifth Street between Chestnut and “Library” Streets. The Drexel Building was demolished in 1959 to make way for the new Library Hall, which today faces Independence Hall.


Second:



Drexel and Company Building; corner of 15th and Walnut Streets
Etching: 1927 Earle Horter: illustrator and painter (1881-1940) Born: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania



Photo credit: amerimar.com

Year Built: 1920
Square Footage: 53,574 SF

Still standing.

[Swinefeld]

The Harriton House, (1704)

The house we know today as Harriton was built by a Welsh Quaker named Rowland Ellis in 1704. Ellis was a significant member of his Welsh community, serving as a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly and as an overseer of the Quaker schools in Philadelphia. It was Rowland Ellis who received the nearly 700 acre estate from William Penn in the 1680's. He called his estate "Bryn Mawr" which means "high hill" in Welsh. The three-story, T-shaped stone house, which he built, with its flaring eaves and its tall brick chimneys survives as a unique and sophisticated example of early Pennsylvania architecture. The original interior paneling and closed-string staircase show stylistic elements from this early period.

Ellis had only a small subsistence farm at Bryn Mawr, describing in a letter to his son-in-law that he had approximately 15 acres under cultivation in the middle 1690's, mostly in wheat, oats and Indian Corn. Although he hoped to have as much as 40 acres under cultivation in the near future, that 15 acre farm was about the size of the park which remains today.

- Harritonhouse.org


Photo credit: Swinefeld


Photo credit: Swinefeld

[City Streets]

Great story , great shots of a great home . Thanks Swiney .