Category: News and Events of Interest

Wildwood: Looking Back To America’s Promised Future

April 18, 2023 / / 0 Comments

The Society for Commercial Archeology presents
Wildwood: Looking Back To America’s Promised Future

photo by Mark Havens

with Daniel Vieyra and Mark Havens
Wednesday, May 17th 8:00 p.m.on Zoom
Free For members of SCA, Society of Architectural Historians Philadelphia Chapter, Docomomo-US-PHL, and Doo Wop Preservation League
please register here for the Zoom link
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wildwood-looking-back-to-americas-promised-future-registration-562580151377

Join architect and preservationist Daniel Vieyra and photographer Mark Havens as they present the rich midcentury modern motel architecture of Wildwood, New Jersey from two distinct viewpoints. Vieyra will discuss his preservation work with Steven Izenour on the 1990s design studios that cataloged, analyzed and evaluated the motels. The project ultimately identified clusters that coherently told the story of Wildwood’s evolution while allowing areas in between for new development. Havens will discuss his decade-long photography project documenting these structures that resulted in the monograph entitled “Out of Season: The Vanishing Architecture of the Wildwoods”.

CITY BEAUTIFUL ON THE RAND: LUTYENS IN SOUTH AFRICA

August 8, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Free, please register at https://lutyenstrustamerica.com/

Join us for this discussion and history of Edwin Lutyens’s work in South Africa. Lutyens came to South Africa following the footsteps of his then close friend, Herbert Baker. Designed before their work together in Delhi, Lutyens’s designs for the Johannesburg Art Gallery and the Rand Regiments Memorial Provide interesting insight into the evolution of Lutyens’s body of work.

HENRY W. BROWN, HIS HOUSE, AND THE OAK ROAD: A WALKING TOUR

September 3, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Ivy Cottage, 3819 The Oak Road, 1914

Sponsored by The East Falls Historical Society

Led by David M. Breiner, PhD, Thomas Jefferson University,
and Steven J. Peitzman, MD, Drexel University

Saturday, September 15, 2018 at 10 a.m. (Rain Date will be Sunday September 16)

Cost $15, EFHS Members $10, payable on site, pre-registration is not required.

Please meet at 10:00 sharp at the southwest corner of The Oak Road and School House Lane. The tour goes on unless the morning brings heavy rain. Parking is permitted along some parts of The Oak Road. For more information contact Steven Peitzman at peitzmansj@gmail.com.

Stretching only from School House Lane to Midvale Avenue, The Oak Road is likely the only street in Philadelphia that both requires a  “The” for its full name, and has always contained an oak tree in its center. Both the street and its dominant structure, the Timmons House, were created by Henry W. Brown in 1907. Brown was a prominent figure in the insurance industry and a lead cricket player at the Germantown Cricket Club. The Oak Road came to be both a residential “colony” for the Brown family and a handsome development of mostly Colonial Revival homes: the handsome brick and stucco Timmons house exemplifies the Colonial Revival movement in American Architecture and culture. Other buildings on the tour will include the Ivy Cottage, a Gothic revival house dating to circa 1860, and the Memorial Church of the Good Shepherd, designed by Philadelphia architect Carl Ziegler and built in 1926. The tour leaders, David Breiner, PhD and Steven Peitzman, MD, will also discuss the historical background of School House Lane and of the nearby part of East Falls which was once known as Queen Lane Manor. We will not visit inside the structures to be discussed, but the tour leaders will share several historic maps and photographs. The tour will meet on Saturday, September 15, at 10 am, at the southwest corner of School House Lane and The Oak Road.

PAUL CRET AND MODERN CLASSICISM

April 2, 2018 / / 0 Comments

A conference, celebrating the centennial of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway
presented by the Athenaeum of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Museum of Art
May 11-12, 2018

Friday, May 11 (at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia)
5:30 PM Registration and Reception
6:30 PM Keynote Address: “What Does the City Beautiful Mean for the 21st Century City?”
Paul Goldberger

Saturday, May 12 (at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Perelman Building)
9:00 AM Registration

9:30 AM First session
“Paul Cret and Philadelphia’s Modern Classicism”
David Brownlee, University of Pennsylvania, “Between Column and I-Beam: The Architectural Theory of Paul Cret”
Marc Vincent, Baldwin Wallace University, “Cass Gilbert and the City Beautiful”
Gail Fenske, Roger Williams University, “Friendly Rivals: Paul Cret and Arthur Brown, Jr. at Home and Abroad”
Jeffrey T. Tilman, University of Cincinnati

12:00PM Lunch Break (on your own)

1:30 PM Second Session
“’An Artistic Gem’: Paul Cret and the Rodin Museum”, Jennifer Thompson, Philadelphia Museum of Art
“’Nioc! Nioc-Nioc!’ (Quack, Quack, Quack): Paul Philippe Cret, Penn’s Poilu-Professor, and World War I”  Alisa Chiles, University of Pennsylvania
“The Architect as Collaborator with the Engineer” Jonathan Farnham, Philadelphia Historical Commission
Robert P. Breading and Barry Eiswerth in conversation, “longtemps après Cret” former partners, H2L2 architects

register online at: www.PhilaAthenaeum.org/symposium.html

Related exhibition:
Professor Cret’s Parkway: One Architect’s Legacy on Philadelphia’s Grandest Thoroughfare
The Athenæum of Philadelphia, April 30-August 31, 2018

The Athenæum of Philadelphia celebrates the Benjamin Franklin Parkway’s 100th anniversary with an exhibition of the works of master architect, Paul Philippe Cret (1876-1945). Arriving here from his native France in 1903, Cret quickly became the acknowledged leader of Philadelphia’s City Beautiful Movement. This exhibition, features more than 30 original designs by Cret (built and unbuilt). These rare documents, many of which have never been exhibited, beautifully illustrate Cret’s lasting influence on Philadelphia.

In conjunction with the Athenæum exhibition, the Rodin Museum will display a 1927 model of its building and gardens alongside photographs and related material exploring Cret’s design for this Parkway institution.

Phila Archaeological Forum Historic Burial Places Map and Database

February 24, 2018 / / 0 Comments

The location of more than 200 historical period burial grounds in Philadelphia can now be viewed on the Philadelphia Archaeological Forum’s Historic Burial Places Map and Database  – and the GIS data set can be downloaded as a shapefile at http://www.phillyarchaeology.net/paf-activities/burial-places-forum/historic-philadelphia-burial-places-map/

As longtime advocates for those who can no longer speak for themselves, PAF is lobbying for clearer municipal laws that compel developers to handle burial remains respectfully. We have therefore created this extensive geographical database (GIS).

It is PAF’s intention that, in addition to being useful to historians, archaeologists, and other researchers, consulting the database of known cemeteries and private family plots will become a starting point in the process of due diligence of both developers and the city of Philadelphia when considering new projects.

The database, originally the personal research of archaeologist Kimberly Morrell, has been assembled from historic maps, newspapers, academic theses and other sources. Research is ongoing, but the database is the most comprehensive such resource to date.

Learn more about how this resource was made and how to use it at http://www.phillyarchaeology.net/paf-activities/burial-places-forum/historic-philadelphia-burial-places-map/

Little Flower Manor Park Master Site Plan

February 23, 2018 / / 0 Comments

This Mon., Feb. 26, 2018, the Delaware County Planning Department will be hosting a public meeting to discuss the master plan for Little Flower Manor, a 33-acre open space site located on Springfield Road in Darby Borough and Upper Darby Township.

The meeting is at 7:00 p.m. at  the Darby Borough Community Center, 1022 Ridge Avenue, Darby, PA.  No registration is required.


The site is slated to become the largest County-owned park among eastern Delaware County municipalities and features Woodburne, a stately residence designed by Horace Trumbauer in 1906. In the 1930s it was home to the Little Flower Institute, a girls orphanage operated by Sisters of the Divine Redeemer.  In the 1970s it became a nursing home, Little Flower Manor, closing in 2005. Currently the fate of the historic property remains uncertain. Project overseers invite public comment on desired uses of Woodburne and its adjacent open space.

For more information visit http://www.co.delaware.pa.us/planning/currentprojects/LFMPublicMeetingNotice2.html
and
http://www.co.delaware.pa.us/planning/currentprojects/LittleFlowerManorMasterSiteDevelopmentPlan.html

PALAZZOS OF POWER: CENTRAL STATIONS OF THE PHILADELPHIA ELECTRIC COMPANY, 1900-1930

March 31, 2017 /

2017-04-13 PECO Allegheny Ave District Off

An exhibition and book talk by by Joseph E. B. Elliott and Aaron V. Wunsch
Harvey and Irwin Kroiz Gallery, Architectural Archives
Lower Level of the Fisher Fine Arts Library
220 South 34th Street, University of Pennsylvania
Exhibition: March 20 – June 14, 2017
Reception and Book Talk: Thursday, April 13, 6:00 .p.m.
Free and open to the public.  No registration required.

This exhibition explores a series of colossal neoclassical power stations erected by The Philadelphia Electric Company between 1900 and 1930.  Presented through the photographs of Joseph E. B. Elliott (Professor of Art, Muhlenberg College) and scholarship of Aaron V. Wunsch (Assistant Professor of Historic Preservation, University of Pennsylvania), the show accompanies their recently released book, Palazzos of Power (Princeton Architectural Press): https://www.amazon.com/Palazzos-Power-Stations-Philadelphia-1900-1930/dp/1616895004

 

Celebrating an Architectural Masterpiece: The 100th Anniversary of the Harrison Rotunda at the Penn Museum

November 2, 2015 /

Penn Musuem lecture_rotunda

Sunday, Nov 8, 2:00 p.m.
Penn Museum, 3260 South Street
Free with Museum admission
http://www.penn.museum/

One of the grandest domes in the country, the Penn Museum’s Harrison rotunda, completed in 1915 and long home to an internationally renowned collection of Chinese art, soars an impressive 90 feet high. David Brownlee, Ph.D., Shapiro-Weitzenhoffer Professor of the History of Art, shares his insights into the historical architectural significance of the rotunda and the auditorium that rests directly below. The completion of the rotunda, he notes, demonstrated the University’s great and modern rationality and its sustained commitment to its museum master plan, designed to accommodate infinite expansion of the museum as its collections grew. It also demonstrated the continued experimentation with architectural vocabulary by its very creative architects. Finally, it was assuredly a bravura display of the nearly magical structural capacity of the Guastavino vaulting system.  Alessandro Pezzati, Museum Senior Archivist, shares stories about the construction and opening of these iconic spaces.

Vanna Venturi House for Sale

July 15, 2015 /

Vanna Venturi house 002

Robert Venturi’s groundbreaking design for his mother is one of the most influential buildings of the latter half of the 20th century. Named one of the “10 Buildings That Changed America” and widely considered the first post-modern building in the United States, to say it is notable among architects is an understatement. Many world-renowned building designers and critics have made pilgrimages to this residence hidden in the heart of Chestnut Hill.

For more visit http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/8330-Millman-St_Philadelphia_PA_19118_M49270-07860?row=1