Category: Chapter Programs

PHILA SAH ANNUAL CHAPTER MEMBERS MEETING

April 28, 2025 / / 0 Comments


Philadelphia Chapter Society of Architectural Historians
ANNUAL CHAPTER MEMBERS MEETING
Friday May 9, 2025 at 6:00 p.m.
The University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives
Fisher Fine Arts Library Lower Level, 220 S. 34th St, Philadelphia, PA 19104

The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.
RSVP requested at info@philachaptersah.org
We will have a brief business meeting followed by our presentation:

BOOK PRESENTATION: SPATIAL THEORIES FOR THE AMERICAS: COUNTERWEIGHTS TO FIVE CENTURIES OF EUROCENTRISM
by author Fernando Lara. PhD, Professor of Architecture, UPenn Stuart Weitzman School of Design

To study the built environment of the Americas is to wrestle with an inherent contradiction. While the disciplines of architecture, urban design, landscape, and planning share the fundamental belief that space and place matter, the overwhelming majority of canonical knowledge and the vernacular used to describe these disciplines comes from another, very different, continent. With this book, Fernando Luiz Lara discusses several theories of space—drawing on cartography, geography, anthropology, and mostly architecture—and proposes counterweights to five centuries of Eurocentrism. The first part of Spatial Theories for the Americas offers a critique of Eurocentrism in the discipline of architecture, problematizing its theoretical foundation in relation to the inseparability of modernization and colonization. The second part makes explicit the insufficiencies of a hegemonic Western tradition at the core of spatial theories by discussing a long list of authors who have thought about the Americas. To overcome centuries of Eurocentrism, Lara concludes, will require a tremendous effort, but, nonetheless, we have the responsibility of looking at the built environment of the Americas through our own lenses. Spatial Theories for the Americas proposes a fundamental step in that direction.

Fernando Luiz Lara works on theorizing spaces of the Americas with an emphasis on the dissemination of design ideas beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries. Framed by decolonial theories, Lara has written widely about issues that pertain to the built environment of our continent.

His latest publications include Spatial Theories for the Americas (University of Pittsburgh Press, November 2024); Street Matters: A Critical History of 20th Century Urban Policy in Brazil (with Ana Paula Koury, 2022); Excepcionalidad del Modernismo Brasileño (2019); Modern Architecture in Latin America (with Luis Carranza, 2015); and The Rise of Popular Modernist Architecture in Brazil (2008). Among the many books he edited are Decolonizing the Spatial History of the Americas (2022) and Spatial Concepts for Decolonizing the Americas (with Felipe Hernandez, 2023).

Before joining the Weitzman School, Lara was the director of the PhD Program in Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin (2018-23), and chair of the Brazil center at the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies in that same University (2012-15). He has also taught at the University of Michigan (2004-09) and was a visiting professor at the University of São Paulo, Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, in 2017.

A TOUR OF GLEN FOERD ESTATE

February 26, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Saturday, March 15 from 11:00 a.m. to approx. 12:30 p.m.
5001 Grant Avenue, Philadelphia PA 19114
Follow signs to the parking area when you arrive, then walk back to the house.

Advance registration and pre-payment required.
$10 for Phila Chapter SAH members – use this link to pay for & reserve your spot
https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/58WYFFQP5NCNW

$15 for non-members – use this link to pay for & reserve your spot
https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/5ZT7UZMAAW5H6

You may choose to make the payment via your PayPal Account, Venmo or your debit/credit card by selecting the proper button. Please fill in your name, address and email so that we may properly record your payment.

Questions? info@philachaptersah.org

The Glen Foerd estate was established by Charles Macalester, Jr. Born in Philadelphia in 1798, he was a respected businessman and broker in the Philadelphia firm of Gaw, Macalester and Company. In 1850, he purchased 84 acres in northeastern Philadelphia. He sold some of the land retaining a section along the Delaware River for a summer residence that he called Glengarry. When he died in 1873, the property was inherited by his daughter Eliza “Lily” Macalester Laughton, who continued to spend summers there until her death in 1891.

In 1895, the mansion was purchased by Robert H. and Caroline Foerderer. Robert made his fortune in the manufacture of kidskin leather. Leather gloves, shoes and other clothing accessories made from the soft, supple leather was the height of fashion. His Philadelphia manufacturing enterprise employed 5,000 workers and processed nine million goat skins a year.

After purchasing the estate, Foerderer hired architect, William McAuley of Philadelphia, to handle extensive renovations to the mansion. The house was enlarged and enhanced with Classical Revival additions. Additions included a porte cochere, formal dining room, and impressive art gallery. Other enhancements included a Haskell pipe organ, parquet floors, grand staircase, elaborate leaded glass skylights, and rathskellar. Everything was planned to accommodate entertainment on a grand scale. As a final touch, they changed the name of the estate to Glen Foerd, a merger of Glengarry and the Foerderer name. Due to the elaborate renovation design and labor delays, the Foerderers had not yet moved back into the mansion when Robert died in 1903.

Caroline Foerderer continued to reside at Glen Foerd and continued to renovate the estate.. Around 1915, Florence Foerderer Tonner and her husband William moved to Glen Foerd to assist her widowed mother. After her mother’s death in 1934, Florence continued to add to her parents’ art collection. Florence was a strong supporter of the arts. She remained very active in the cultural and social affairs of Philadelphia, until her death in 1971.

Florence left the estate to the Lutheran Church of America. In 1985, the Glen Foerd Conservation Corporation and the Fairmount Park Commission assumed ownership of the property that is now a public park, historic house museum and event venue.

The Architecture of Instruction In Late Ottoman Istanbul

November 15, 2024 / / 0 Comments

The Philadelphia Chapter Society of Architectural Historians &
The Tyler School of Art & Architecture at Temple Univ present
The Architecture of Instruction In Late Ottoman Istanbul
by Ryan J. Mitchell, PhD Student, Art History, Tyler School of Art & Architecture

Wednesday, December 4 at 6:00 p.m.
In person at Temple’s Charles Library, Event Space/Room 102, 1900 N 13th St, Philadelphia.
(The Event Space is in the library atrium, directly across from the 13th Street entrance to the building.)
Free and open to all.  Registration not required.
Questions: info@philachaptersah.org

Focusing on schools constructed in Istanbul and Athens between 1868 and 1900, this paper offers a comparative study of the Greek (also known as Rum) educational institutions, analyzing the various strategies of self-representation at play in their architectural programs. The study compares the shared stylistic language of eclectic classicism that appear in the Zografyon Lyceum (1890) and the Zappeio School for Girls (1885) in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district, as well as related structures within the Ottoman lands and in the then nascent Kingdom of Greece. Shared design choices across ethno-religious communities resident in the late Ottoman Empire created an associative “architecture of instruction,” which will be illustrated through a discussion of the designs of Zografyon and the Zappeio that contextualizes the use of a kind of neo-classicism in Istanbul’s late Ottoman schools as both part of the era’s global patterns of taste, as well as explores the questions of identity at play in the Ottoman sphere. The paper also aims to show how this phenomenon in the built environment inscribed in the urban fabric the imperial bureaucracy’s attempt to unite its diverse population under a common identity constructed on an imagined Helleno-Ottoman past.

Ryan is the 2024 Philadelphia Chapter Society of Architectural Historians George B. Tatum Fellow. Now in the fourth year of his PhD, his research focus on Islamic art and architecture with a concentration on the Ottoman Empire and Eastern Mediterranean in the long nineteenth century.

The Annual Fellowship provides funding for an area student to attend the Annual Society of Architectural Historians International Conference each year. For details on the 2025 Fellowship application see https://philachaptersah.org/index.php/about/

Culver & Rogers: Victorian Philadelphia Architects

October 26, 2024 / / 0 Comments

The Philadelphia Chapter Society of Architectural Historians presents
Culver & Rogers: Victorian Philadelphia Architects
by Greg Prichard
Wednesday, November 6 at 6:00 p.m.
Online via Zoom at this link:
https://Jefferson.zoom.us/j/94537050102
Free and open to all.

Some of the most notable Victorian landmarks of suburban Philadelphia came from the drawing boards of a firm barely remembered today. The partnership of Culver & Rogers produced a variety of public buildings, businesses, and homes for newly blossoming towns including Wayne, Devon, Berwyn, and Langhorne. Further afield, controversy still follows some of their restorations of historic structures, including Independence Hall.

Greg Prichard, Historic Preservation Planner for Lower Merion Township and board member of the Radnor Historical Society, has compiled numerous scattered references relating to the firm to form a fascinating narrative. His illustrated presentation will explore the sum of their extraordinary legacy.

Architectural Authorship and Authority: Denise Scott Brown In 1967

February 23, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Denise Scott Brown at Das Pathos das Funktionalismus (“The Pathos of Functionalism”), Berlin, 1974. Photograph IDZ Berlin/Christian Ahlers; Courtesy of Venturi Scott Brown Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania.

Architectural Authorship and Authority: Denise Scott Brown In 1967
by Denise Costanzo, Associate Professor of Architecture,
The Pennsylvania State University
Friday, March 15, 2024, at 5:30 p.m.
The Architectural Archives
Stuart Weitzman School of Design
University of Pennsylvania
220 South 34th Street at Smith Walk
(Lower Level of the Fisher Fine Arts Library building)
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Reservations requested at info@philachaptersah.org

The ongoing controversy over Denise Scott Brown’s exclusion from the individual Pritzker Prize awarded to Robert Venturi in 1991 hinges on issues of authorship, attribution, and equity in architectural partnerships, and in the wider profession. The Pritzker jury highlighted Venturi’s early, more seemingly independent work, including his sole-authored Complexity and Contradiction of 1966. Scott Brown, however, worked on her own ambitious book project during these same years, one whose different fate prefigured her distinct trajectory. Contextualizing Scott Brown’s decisions about the function of ambitious writing at a pivotal juncture humanize the complexities that followed.

Denise Costanzo is Associate Professor of Architecture at the Pennsylvania State University. She is co-editor (with Andrew Leach) of Italian Imprints on Twentieth Century Architecture (Bloomsbury, 2022) and author of What Architecture Means: Connecting Ideas and Design (Routledge 2015). Her essays on Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi have appeared in journals and books that including The Routledge Companion Guide to Fascist Italian Architecture: Reception and Legacy (Routledge, 2020); and Denise Scott Brown: In Others’ Eyes (Birkhaüser, 2022). Her current book project is Modern Architects and the Problem of the Postwar Rome Prize: France, Spain, America and Britain (University of Virginia Press).

2023 Phila Chapter SAH Annual Members Meeting and Talk

April 18, 2023 / / 0 Comments

MAKE WAY FOR A KINDERGARTEN: PRESERVING JOŽE PLEČNIK’S WORKS IN LJUBLJANA, YUGOSLAVIA, 1957 -1988
by Veronica E. Aplenc, PhD, Author of Imagining Slovene Socialist Modernity: The Urban Redesign of Ljubljana’s Beloved Trnovo Neighborhood, 1951-1989
Thursday, May 11, 2023, from 6:30 to approx. 8:00 PM
The Architectural Archives, Stuart Weitzman School of Design
University of Pennsylvania
220 South 34th Street at Smith Walk (Lower Level of the Fisher Fine Arts Library building)
Philadelphia, PA 19104
This is a member’s only program.  
Reservations are requested at info@philachaptersah.org

Please join us for our Annual Meeting on Thursday, May 11th, in the Architectural Archives, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. We will have a brief business meeting followed by the talk.

Internationally acclaimed interwar architect Jože Plečnik occupied a complex position, one both marginalized but foundational, during Yugoslav state socialism. As socialist-era architects and preservationists addressed Plečnik’s architectural works, their local professional beliefs which operated within much broader political contexts drove their actions, versus a simple politics of culture. Following training under Otto Wagner in Vienna, architect Jože Plečnik received praise for his interwar designs in Vienna, Prague, and hometown of Ljubljana, then Yugoslavia. After the WWII and Yugoslavia’s transformation into a socialist state, Plečnik’s architectural oeuvre was redefined in Ljubljana from “modern” to “classical” as the architectural profession reinterpreted itself for the new era. As Ljubljana strove to transform physically into a socialist city, Plečnik’s architectural works were also caught between urban development and preservation trends. This was particularly visible in the Trnovo neighborhood, the site of Plečnik’s residence, his interwar architectural works, and a socialist high-rise development. Through unexpected forces, Plečnik’s works went from overshadowed in the 1960s to preserved by the late 1980s, in an echoing of the architect’s ambivalent position under socialism.

Veronica E. Aplenc received her M.S. in historic preservation and Ph.D. in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania She is currently President of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians. Her research interests include the everyday built environment, historic preservation, and the intersection of the traditional with the socialist modern. Her work on the everyday built environment in socialist Yugoslavia has been supported by IREX and Fulbright grants. In addition to her scholarship, she has collaborated on international research teams, participated in international teaching exchanges, and serves as a preservation and planning consultant.

The Architectural Archives are located in Frank Furness’s Fisher Fine Arts Library, on 34th Street just south of Walnut Street. They are easily accessed by SEPTA (bus routes 21 and 42; 33rd Street trolley stop; and 34th Street subway stop). Parking is available in lots, including on the NE corner 34th & Chestnut Streets (enter from 34th Street) and in garages, including on the NE corner of 38th and Walnut Street (enter from Chestnut Street). On street parking is available, but may be limited.

The exhibit “Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect” is currently on view at the Archives.  Feel free to have a preview before our meeting begins.  The Chapter has scheduled a tour of the exhibit on Monday, June 5th.  Sign up details for that program will be sent out shortly.

Also save the date for an Architectural Walking Tour of Chambersburg, PA, on Saturday, August 12 with architectural historian and part-time Chambersburg resident Jay Shockley.  Details for this program will be sent out this summer.

Please send questions to info@philachaptersah.org.

 

GIDEON SHRYOCK: TRACING THE GREEK REVIVAL FROM PHILADELPHIA TO FRANKFORT AND BACK

April 6, 2023 / / 0 Comments

presented by Philadelphia Chapter Society of Architectural Historians & Temple School of Architecture

by R. Scott Gill, PhD, Assoc AIA, and co-author of Gideon Shryock, His Life and Architecture 1802-1880
Thursday, April 13 at 6:30 PM
Tyler Architecture Building
2001 N 13th Street, Room 104
Free and open to all.

Gideon Shryock, Kentucky’s first formally trained architect, brought the international style of the Greek Revival to Kentucky, and in the process imparted a template of architectural and professional dignity for others to follow. Born in Lexington in 1802, Shryock learned the building trade working with his father, a skilled carpenter and builder. At the age of twenty, he traveled to Philadelphia to apprentice under the country’s great architectural master, William Strickland. There, Shryock absorbed the skills, rules, and resources of his chosen profession, and made valuable friends among his talented cohort of apprentices. Upon returning home, he won the coveted prize to design and build a new statehouse in Frankfort. It was an extraordinary accomplishment that launched the young architect toward a remarkable future.

While Shryock is most known for his monumental Greek Revival buildings in Frankfort, Lexington, and Louisville, his body of work was quite varied and included numerous houses, churches, commercial buildings, and even a patented “steam-boiler furnace.” He pursued competitions, including for the Washington Monument and Tennessee State Capitol. In his twilight years, he was honored as the first president of the newly created Kentucky Association of Architects.

In this talk Gill will draw from his recently published book, Gideon Shryock: His Life and Architecture, 1802-1880, to show how Shryock influenced and was influenced by his great peers as he helped evolve the American Greek Revival into a mature style.

Scott Gill is the award-winning co-author of three books on Kentucky architecture and an adjunct lecturer in architectural history at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a former board member of the Society of Architectural Historians and currently sits on the board of the Texas Chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art. Gill holds a PhD in architectural history from UT-Austin, an MBA from MIT, a Master of Architecture from Rice, and a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford. A past resident of Louisville, he currently practices real estate in Austin.

Why Memorials Are Strange: A Book Chat About The Everyday Life of Memorials

March 9, 2023 / / 0 Comments

with Andy Shanken and Michael J. Lewis
Thursday, March 23, 2023 at 7:00 PM on Zoom
Free – Registration required at
https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_a-TogZLZRvySqpOUtulTpg#/registration

Memorials are commonly studied as part of the commemorative infrastructure of modern society. Just as often, they are understood as sites of political contestation, where people battle over the meaning of events. But most of the time, they are neither. Instead, they take their rest as ordinary objects, part of the street furniture of urban life. Most memorials are ‘turned on’ only on special days, such as Memorial Day, or at heated moments, as in August 2017, when the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville was overtaken by a political maelstrom. The rest of the time they are turned off. This book is about the everyday life of memorials. It explores their relationship to the pulses of daily life, their meaning within this quotidian context, and their place within the development of modern cities.

Andrew Shanken is Professor of Architectural History and the Director of American Studies at U.C. Berkeley. He publishes on the topic of architecture and memory, the history of preservation, keywords in architecture, and the visual culture of architecture and planning. His book, 194X: Architecture, Planning, and Consumer Culture on the American Homefront (2009), examines anticipatory architecture on the American homefront. A second book, Into the Void Pacific (2015), is an architectural history of the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair. His new book, The Everyday Life of Memorials (Zone Books, 2022), explores the meaning of memorials in daily life and their place within the development of modern cities.

Michael J. Lewis id the Faison-Pierson-Stoddard Professor of Art History at Williams Collegewhere heteaches modern architecture and American art.  He is also the architecture critic for the Wall Street Journal. After receiving his B.A. from Haverford College in 1980, and two years at the University of Hannover Germany, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. He has taught at Bryn Mawr College; McGill University, Montreal; and the University of Natal, South Africa. His books include Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind (2001), American Art and Architecture (2006), and the prize-winning August Reichensperger: The Politics of the German Gothic Revival (1993). He was a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton (2000-2001) and in 2008 received a Guggenheim Fellowship to support the completion of City of Refuge (2016), his study of millennial Utopias. Lewis has been at Williams College since 1993 and in 2008 he was named Faison-Pierson-Stoddard Professor of Art.

Book link:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9781942130727/the-everyday-life-of-memorials

Registration for this exciting event is free. Please consider donating to SAH Philadephia or joining the chapter for $25 per year. Your support helps to underwrite future events. https://philachaptersah.org/index.php/membership/

For any questions or concerns regarding registration, please contact info@philachaptersah.org.

 

A BIG FISH IN A SMALL POND: JOE BRIGHT (1905-1976), FROM PENN TO PIONEERING MODERNISM IN SOUTH GEORGIA

November 9, 2022 / / 0 Comments

by Alfred Willis, PhD, independent architectural historian, retired Professor of Architecture
Thursday, December 1 at, 7:00 p.m. online via Zoom
Free, but registration required.  Email David Breiner <David.Breiner@jefferson.edu> no later than 8:00 PM on Nov 30 to receive the Zoom link.

A Kentucky native and 1931 architecture graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Joe Bright set up an independent practice in 1949 in his wife’s hometown of Valdosta, Georgia, in 1949.  His fledgling firm distinguished itself as the producer of many of the most notable of the town’s first Modernist buildings.  Alongside them Bright also designed a number of dramatic houses in which he combined Colonial Revival stylistic effects with Modern principles of composition.  Tracing his career provides a chance to explore how a mid-20th-century architect could negotiate the tension between tradition and innovation to produce a coherent body of work whose qualities have become all the more apparent in a retrospect informed by the Postmodernism of the Philadelphia School.

RECENT DISCOVERY: SAMUEL SLOAN, TERRA COTTA, AND THE FRANKLIN COUNTY COURTHOUSE IN CHAMBERSBURG, PA

September 18, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Tuesday, October 11 at 7:00 p.m.
Online via Zoom
Free, but in order to receive a private link to the Zoom presentation registration is required with david.breiner@jefferson.edu

Chambersburg, PA, was the only Northern town burned down by the Confederate Army, in 1864. This included the Franklin County Courthouse of 1841-43. Even though the reconstruction of this building following the war is central to the town’s history, it was never known who was responsible for it. During the pandemic, one of the lecturers discovered that the beautiful column capitals on the courthouse are terra cotta. Prior research by both lecturers on the central role of Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan in the promotion of American terra cotta in the 1850s led to the further discovery that Sloan and his partner Addison Hutton were the architects of the 1865- 66 courthouse.

Jay Shockley, an architectural historian and preservationist, was employed by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission between 1979 and 2015. As the senior historian in the Research Department, he researched and wrote more than 100 reports covering all aspects of the city’s architectural and social cultural history. Currently he is a Co-Director of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project.

Susan Tunick, a New Yorker, is a ceramic artist, historian, and preservationist. She combines her interest in making ceramics with her concern about preserving historic architectural ceramic surfaces. As president of the Friends of Terra Cotta, she is active in research and advocacy, working to protect terra cotta and tile.