Philadelphia's Architectural Tradition

The City of Philadelphia features outstanding examples of every important style and period, from works by the Colonial-era, carpenter-architects, to modern masterpieces by Howe and Lescaze, Louis I. Kahn and Rafael Viñoly. In Part 2 of this feature we look at 19th Century Philadelphia Architecture.

19th Century Philadelphia

Much of the city’s outstanding stock of 19th century structures is found in the Rittenhouse Square area, on the southwest side of Center City.

• Residences include the row houses along Locust Street and Delancey Place in Italian Renaissance Revival, Georgian Revival and Beaux-Arts styles. Map
  
  
• Fine Victorian houses by Wilson Eyre from the late 19th century. 18th and Delancey Place Map
  
  
• The Thomas Hockley House (1875/94), a distinctively virtuosic brick mansion by Philadelphia’s boldest native architect, Frank Furness. 235 South 21st Street Map
  
  

Rittenhouse Square also contains several historic churches built in the 19th Century:

• The Gothic Revival St. Mark’s Church (1848-51) by John Notman. 1625 Locust Street Map
  
  
• The Church of the Holy Trinity by John Notman (1856-59), one of America’s first accurate buildings in the Romanesque style. 1904 Walnut Street Map
  
  
• The First Presbyterian Church (1869-72) by Henry Sims, with a tower and chapel added by Furness in 1900. 201 South 21st Street Map
  
  

City Hall

In the heart of Center City, where Market Street and Broad Street intersect, is City Hall (1871-1901), designed by John McArthur, Jr., with Thomas U. Walter. It is a building of superlatives: the largest municipal building in the United States and the country’s finest example of Second Empire style, whose 548-foot tower (the world’s tallest masonry structure without a steel frame) is topped by the largest single piece of sculpture on any building - Alexander Milne Calder’s 27-ton cast-iron statue of William Penn.

Calder created the rest of the building’s sculpture as well, decorating both the exterior and the lavish public spaces inside. Monumental arched portals on each side of the building open into a central public courtyard, giving the impression that City Hall is not merely open to the public but is penetrated by the two main thoroughfares. Map

Academy of Music

To the south of City Hall, on the section of Broad Street that has been developed as the Avenue of the Arts, stands the Academy of Music (1855-57), for many years the home of The Philadelphia Orchestra.

Designed as an opera house by Napoleon LeBrun and Gustave Runge, the Academy was modeled after La Scala and given a rich neo-Baroque interior, with huge Corinthian columns marking the proscenium. 240 South Broad Street Map

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

To the north of City Hall on Broad Street stands the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1872-76), the masterpiece of Frank Furness. Outside, the building is an astounding fusion of historical styles - Venetian, English and French - in red brick, rusticated brownstone, dressed sandstone and polished pink granite, ornamented with purplish terra-cotta.

Inside, the low foyer opens into a grand staircase hall that vibrates with rich color, its walls of deep red, incised with gold floral patterns, glowing beneath a blue ceiling sprinkled with silver stars. 118 North Broad Street Map