Philadelphia Architecture

Philadelphia is a city of Colonial and ghostly architecture with narrow historic streets that open up onto vistas of bold, towering skyscrapers. It is a city of Greek Revival banks, Italian Renaissance, and Second Empire buildings, a city of Beaux-Arts hotels, Byzantine and Gothic churches, and International-style high-rises. A hybrid of gritty Chicago and pristine Boston, Philadelphia stands alone, an aristocrat in bib overalls, as a livable, intimate city of neighborhoods and luxurious townhouses, of hidden treasures and spectacular surprises. Philadelphia Architecture, a walk through Philadelphia streets past and present, highlights the richness and diversity of the city's architectural history.

This updated, comprehensive guide to Philadelphia's architecture will appeal to visitors, residents, and architecture enthusiasts.

You will love reading this fun and interesting textbook about colonial architecture in Philadelphia. Contents: Philadelphia Architecture, Georgian Country Houses of Brick, City Residences of Brick, Ledge-Stone Country Houses, Plastered Stone Country Houses, cont.

PHILADELPHIA ARCHITECTURE; a comprehensive guide to 300 years of architectural history describes 253 BUILDINGS with 174 corresponding PHOTOGRAPHS including each building's location, date(s), architect, client, use & its fit into the social & economic history of Philadelphia & its relationship to the evolution of architectural styles. This book is for layperson or architect, resident or visitor. 'A museum of architecture', Philadelphia, more than any American city, represents the history of architecture in the U. S. with its outstanding examples of every important architectural style & period in the country's history. Contains NINE WALKING & DRIVING TOURS, an illustrated GLOSSARY of architectural terms & BIOGRAPHIES of important Philadelphia architects. The companion volume to PHILADELPHIA ARCHITECTURE: PHILADELPHIA'S BEST BUILDINGS: IN (OR NEAR) CENTER CITY. 39-PAGES ($7.95) ISBN (0-9622908-2-3) published by Foundation for Architecture, editor: John Gallery. Highlights 48 significant buildings; colorful MAPS for WALKING TOURS of four areas representing different architectural periods, & PHOTOGRAPHS of each building. Special feature--a list of outstanding buildings of interest to CHILDREN. Guidebook is perfect for the visitor restricted by time who wishes to view a select group of buildings. Call: FFA 215-569-3187; One Penn Center at Suburban Station, Suite 1165, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or Koen Book Distributors.

Flourishing from 1951 to 1965, the Philadelphia School was an architectural golden age that saw a unique convergence of city, practice, and education, all in renewal. And it was a bringing together of architecture, city and regional planning, and landscape architecture education under the leadership of Dean G. Holmes Perkins. During that time at the architecture school at the University of Pennsylvania (known as the Graduate School of Fine Arts or GSFA), Louis Kahn and Robert Venturi were transforming modern architecture; Romaldo Giurgola was applying continental philosophy to architectural theory; Robert Le Ricolais was building experimental structures; Ian McHarg was questioning Western civilization and advancing urban and regional ecology; Herbert Gans was moving into Levittown; and Denise Scott Brown was forging a syncretism of European and American planning theory and discovering popular culture. And in the city, Edmund Bacon was directing the most active city planning commission in the country. This book describes the history of the school, the transformation of the city of Philadelphia, and the philosophy of the Philadelphia School in the context of other movements of the time, and looks at what the Philadelphia School has to offer to architecture today and in the future, all from the point of view of a student who was there.

Historic Architecture in Northwest Philadelphia is a colorful and comprehensive look at the rich architectural history of the Wissahickon Valley, and the people who made it possible with a locally sourced building stone, the Wissahickon schist. The simple stone structures of Germantown's origins as a village of German immigrants laid the groundwork for the more elaborate buildings for Philadelphia's rising mercantile class that followed. From the colonial period to the 1930s, this architectural tour explores 450 structures, many still standing and well preserved, in the area from Wayne Junction in Germantown to Northwest Avenue in Chestnut Hill. A wide variety of architectural styles and influences are captured in nearly 750 modern day and archival images, including the Georgian, Colonial, and Federal styles of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; the Revival of those styles and others; Italianate; Second Empire; and Romantic Eclecticism. This extensive architectural review is ideal for architects, historians, and residents of Northwest Philadelphia.

Cedar Grove, The Cliffs, Grumblethorpe, Mount Airy, Bartram's House and Garden: Accommodation of the Vernacular

How does a landmark become, after just a few generations, a landfill? In Forgotten Philadelphia, Thomas Keels takes the reader through a lavishly illustrated journey through three centuries of Philadelphia's architecture: what was built, how the public perceived the value of certain buildings, and why those buildings were eventually demolished. Keels does not simply lament the loss of buildings. Instead, he argues that in some cases there were good reasons to demolish places like the Broad Street Station; while some people today see this as a loss on par with the destruction of New York's Penn Station, at the time its demolition was to many a symbolic liberation from political corruption. In writing that celebrates Philadelphia past without ever being sentimental, Keels describes a city that was always reinventing itself, filled with people who always had a very measured view of the worth and beauty of its public architecture