Architecture Of Philadelphia
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Architecture Of Philadelphia
The architecture of Philadelphia is a mix of historic and modern styles that reflect the city's history. The first European settlements appeared within the present day borders of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the 17th century with most structures being built from logs. By the 18th century, brick structures had become common. Georgian and later Federal style buildings dominated much of the cityscape. In the first half of the 19th century, Greek revival appeared and flourished with architects such as William Strickland, John Haviland, and Thomas U. Walter. In the second half of the 19th century, Victorian architecture became popular with the city's most notable Victorian architect being Frank Furness. Steel and concrete skyscrapers appeared in the first decades of the 20th century and glass and granite skyscrapers towards the end of the century. Construction continued into the 21st century with the city tallest building, the Comcast Center. Philadelphia made significant contributio ...
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Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church
Gloria Dei Church, known locally as Old Swedes, is a historic church located in the Southwark neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at 929 South Water Street, bounded by Christian Street on the north, South Christopher Columbus Boulevard (formerly Delaware Avenue) on the east, and Washington Avenue on the south. It was built between 1698 and 1700,, p.20, p.178 making it the oldest church in Pennsylvania and second oldest Swedish church in the United States after Holy Trinity Church (Old Swedes) in Wilmington, Delaware. The carpenters for the building were John Smart and John Buett and bricks were supplied by Richard Cantril.Craig, Peter Stebbins; and Kim-Eric Williams, eds. ''Colonial Records of the Swedish Churches in Pennsylvania''. Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 2006., v. 2, p154. The church displays the English vernacular style of church design, which combines elements of the Medieval and Gothic styles. The church's vestry and entranceway were added in 1703 to ...
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Comcast Center (office Building)
Comcast Center, also known as the Comcast Tower, is a skyscraper in Center City, Philadelphia. The 58-story, tower is the second-tallest building in Philadelphia and in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania (after the Comcast Technology Center), as well as the twenty-third tallest building in the United States. Originally called One Pennsylvania Plaza when the building was first announced in 2001, the Comcast Center went through two redesigns before construction began in 2005. Comcast Center was designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects for Liberty Property Trust. In early 2005, the final redesign and its new name—the Comcast Center—were unveiled. The building is named after its lead tenant, cable company Comcast, which makes the skyscraper its corporate headquarters. Leasing , Comcast takes up 89 percent of the building. The building features retail and restaurant space and a connection to the nearby Suburban Station. In Comcast Center's lobby is the ''Comcast Experience'', whi ...
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30th Street Station
3 (three) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4, and is the smallest odd prime number and the only prime preceding a square number. It has religious or cultural significance in many societies. Evolution of the Arabic digit The use of three lines to denote the number 3 occurred in many writing systems, including some (like Roman and Chinese numerals) that are still in use. That was also the original representation of 3 in the Brahmic (Indian) numerical notation, its earliest forms aligned vertically. However, during the Gupta Empire the sign was modified by the addition of a curve on each line. The Nāgarī script rotated the lines clockwise, so they appeared horizontally, and ended each line with a short downward stroke on the right. In cursive script, the three strokes were eventually connected to form a glyph resembling a with an additional stroke at the bottom: ३. The Indian digits spread to the Caliphate in the 9th ...
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Ben Franklin House
The Franklin Residences is a historic apartment building located at 834 Chestnut Street in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It opened on January 14, 1925, as the Benjamin Franklin Hotel and was named after United States Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. History The site The first hotel on the site was the Continental Hotel, built from 1857 to 1860. The 700-room, six-story hotel was designed in the Italianate style by architect John McArthur Jr., who also designed the Philadelphia City Hall. The luxurious hotel boasted one of the first elevators in the country, and a grand stairway made from polished Italian marble. Its main entrance was redesigned by noted Philadelphia architect Frank Furness in 1876. Among its famous guests were Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew Johnson, Charles Dickens, King Edward VII, and Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro. However, its most notable guest was president-elect Abraham Lincoln, who gave a speech from the hotel's balcony on February 21, 1861, just ...
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Drake Hotel (Philadelphia)
The Drake Hotel, a historic 375-foot-tall, 33-story luxury hotel located at 1512–1514 Spruce Street at the corner of S. Hicks Street between S. 15th and S. 16th Streets in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was built in 1928–29 by the Murphy, Quigley Company and was designed by the architectural firm of Ritter and Shay in the Art Deco style with Spanish Baroque terra cotta ornamentation on themes surrounding Sir Francis Drake, including "dolphins, shells, sailing vessels and globes." The building is topped by a terra cotta dome., p.106 The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 18, 1978. It was added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places on October 6, 1977. In 1998, the building was extensively renovated and converted to condominiums as "The Drake". See also * *National Register of Historic Places listings in Center City, Philadelphia National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** ...
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Lewis Tower
Aria (formerly known as the Lewis Tower Building) is a 33-story Art Deco skyscraper in Center City Philadelphia designed by the firm Edmund Gilchrist. History and architectural features An exceptionally slender building, is historic structure was one of the city's tallest office high-rises until the skyscraper boom of the late 1980s. It housed offices until 2005 when the building was sold for conversion into condominiums. Currently, the property is managed by Madison Parke. The building has undergone extensive interior remodeling and exterior renovation (including facade scrubbing and treatment) and has been renamed Aria, a nod to the building's location just off the Avenue of the Arts, Philadelphia's premier performing arts corridor. The Aria was purchased in 2009 by Richard Oller and Jeffrey Goldstein. See also *List of tallest buildings in Philadelphia Philadelphia, the largest city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, is home to more than 300 completed high-rise bui ...
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Spring Garden Street Bridge
Spring Garden Street Bridge is a highway bridge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It crosses the Schuylkill River below Fairmount Dam and connects West Philadelphia to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. It is the fourth bridge at this location. The bridge is located at . 1st bridge: The Colossus As early as 1693, a ferry operated, crossing the Schuylkill River at Fairmount, the hill on which the Philadelphia Museum of Art now stands. Being upstream of the others, this was called the Upper Ferry. For the Upper Ferry site, bridgebuilder Louis Wernwag designed "The Colossus", the longest single-span wooden bridge in the United States. Construction began in April 1812, and it opened on January 7, 1813. A double-arched-truss with a clear span of , it was a marvel of engineering for its time. Also called the "Colossus of Fairmount," the "Upper Ferry Bridge," and the "Lancaster Schuylkill Bridge," the toll bridge was part of the Philadelphia and Lancaster Tu ...
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Center City, Philadelphia
Center City includes the central business district and central neighborhoods of Philadelphia. It comprises the area that made up the City of Philadelphia prior to the Act of Consolidation, 1854, which extended the city borders to be coterminous with Philadelphia County. Greater Center City (defined from Girard Avenue to Tasker Street) has grown into the second-most densely populated downtown area in the United States, after Midtown Manhattan in New York City, with an estimated 202,100 residents in 2020 and a population density of 26,284 per square mile. Geography Boundaries Center City is bounded by South Street to the south, the Delaware River to the east, the Schuylkill River to the west, and Vine Street to the north. The district occupies the old boundaries of the City of Philadelphia before the city was made coterminous with Philadelphia County in 1854. The Center City District, which has special powers of taxation, has a complicated, irregularly shaped boundary that inc ...
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Guild House (Philadelphia)
Guild House is a residential building in Philadelphia which is an important and influential work of 20th-century architecture and was the first major work by Robert Venturi. Along with the Vanna Venturi House it is considered to be one of the earliest expressions of Postmodern architecture, and helped establish Venturi as one of the leading architects of the 20th century. The building, which houses apartments for low-income senior citizens, was commissioned by a local Quaker organization, Friends Rehabilitation Program, Inc. and completed in 1963. Employing a combination of nondescript commercial architecture and ironic historical references, Guild House represented a conscious rejection of Modernist ideals and was widely cited in the subsequent development of the Postmodern movement. History Guild House was commissioned by the (Quaker) Friends Neighborhood Guild, a subsidiary of Friends Rehabilitation Program, Inc., as low-income housing for the elderly and built in 1960–63. I ...
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Robert Venturi
Robert Charles Venturi Jr. (June 25, 1925 – September 18, 2018) was an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major architectural figures of the twentieth century. Together with his wife and partner, Denise Scott Brown, he helped shape the way that architects, planners and students experience and think about architecture and the built environment. Their buildings, planning, theoretical writings, and teaching have also contributed to the expansion of discourse about architecture. Venturi was awarded the Pritzker Prize in Architecture in 1991; the prize was awarded to him alone, despite a request to include his equal partner, Scott Brown. Subsequently, a group of women architects attempted to get her name added retroactively to the prize, but the Pritzker Prize jury declined to do so. Venturi is also known for having coined the maxim "Less is a bore", a postmodern antidote to Mies van der Rohe's famous modernist di ...
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Postmodern Architecture
Postmodern architecture is a style or movement which emerged in the 1960s as a reaction against the austerity, formality, and lack of variety of modern architecture, particularly in the international style advocated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock. The movement was introduced by the architect and urban planner Denise Scott Brown and architectural theorist Robert Venturi in their book ''Learning from Las Vegas''. The style flourished from the 1980s through the 1990s, particularly in the work of Scott Brown & Venturi, Philip Johnson, Charles Moore and Michael Graves. In the late 1990s, it divided into a multitude of new tendencies, including high-tech architecture, neo-futurism, new classical architecture and deconstructivism. However, some buildings built after this period are still considered post-modern. Origins Postmodern architecture emerged in the 1960s as a reaction against the perceived shortcomings of modern architecture, particularly its rigid doctrines, ...
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