Celebrating National Historic Preservation Month
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May is National Historic Preservation Month.
To celebrate, the Preservation Alliance asked 31 historic preservation leaders in Philadelphia to name a building that has inspired them and why. We invite you to watch this space daily and hear from leaders in the local preservation movement as they reveal the historic buildings that have inspired them.
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Roger Moss
Carpenters' Hall
320 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia
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Having written several books on historic buildings, taught in the Preservation Program at Penn, and served as Executive Director of the historic Athenaeum, my "favorite historic building" remains Carpenters' Hall--because it changed my life.
Every Ph.D. candidate must find a dissertation topic. With that in mind I drove from The University of Delaware to Philadelphia to meet with Dr. Whitfield Bell--then Librarian of The American Philosophical Society--in the hope he could suggest a topic on the American Revolution. Fortunately The Carpenters' Company had just turned over its historical records which proved that the members of the Company had supported the Revolution. I obtained permission to study the records, wrote the dissertation, was hired by the Athenaeum, moved to Philadelphia, and eventually became an honorary member of the Carpenters' Company as well as its historian.
As virtually every Philadelphia preservationist knows, Carpenters' Hall is surrounded by Independence National Park, although it remains the property of the Carpenters' Company. It was designed by the master builder/architect Robert Smith (1722-1777) and constructed on the eve of the American Revolution, just in time to invite the First Continental Congress to meet there.
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Today the members of the Carpenters' Company are architects, contractors, engineers--not a carpenter among them. The building is open to the public without charge. Thousands of visitors tour the building annually because the First Continental Congress met in Carpenters' Hall in September, 1774, where Patrick Henry declared, "The distinctions between Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more. Nor am I a Virginian--we are all Americans."
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Roger Moss
Emeritus Director, The Athenauem of Philadelphia
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NEW VIRTUAL LECTURES
Watch from the safety and
comfort of your own home!
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Tuesday, May 19, 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
Art Deco in Philadelphia
Presented by Dr. David Brownlee
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Frances Shapiro-Weitzenhoffer Professor of 19th Century European Art,
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia contributed an exhilarating chapter to the history of "Art Deco," the colorful, invented modern style that offered an exciting alternative to the austere functionalism in the 1920s and 30s. The quintessential style of the Jazz Age, Art Deco brought brilliant color to the decoration of the Art Museum, introduced exotic motifs (including Mayan and Spanish Colonial) to the city's new skyscrapers, and contributed zig-zagging ornament to our radio stations and "automat" restaurants. It was also one of the components of the brilliant stylistic synthesis created by George Howe and William Lescaze in the era's greatest landmark, the PSFS Building.
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Tuesday, May 26, 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
Penn Square, City Hall, and the Emergence of Modern Philadelphia
Presented by Paul Steinke
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Executive Director,
Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia
The building of Philadelphia City Hall at Center Square in the late 19th century was not only a monumental feat of art, architecture and engineering. It was also a powerful catalyst for city building, and for the forging of a civic identity. Preservation Alliance executive director Paul Steinke discusses the forces that led our municipal headquarters to be located where it is, as well as the forces it unleashed to transform the surrounding neighborhood.
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