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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Bruce Laverty
Philadelphia Saving Fund Society
Corner of 12th and Market Streets, Philadelphia
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“Sleek and sheer and shining”
I opened my first bank account in 1965 with a 10 cent deposit through the school banking program of the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society. Every Tuesday my 2nd grade classmates at Julia Ward Howe Elementary and I dutifully brought our tartan-plaid passbooks and jingling deposits and handed them over to a “school bank officer.” This officer, a fellow student, counted the money, issued each of us receipts, and turned the cash and passbooks over to our teacher, Miss Kirschbaum, who took them to the bank on her lunch hour. When I was old enough to handle deposits on my own I got to see the building where my money went. The PSFS Logan branch was a simple, limestone lockbox that conveyed a sense of safety and security for my accumulating dimes, quarters and dollars. In 1980; with my first job in Center City, the iconic PSFS at 12th & Market became my branch bank. Now I deposited not dimes, but paychecks, in a sleek, stunning banking room with enormous plate glass windows and polished black and white marble. As I learned its history I was blown away by the idea that in 1932 a Philadelphia building set the bar for the International Style skyscraper design. 88 years after its opening, PSFS still hasn’t been matched.
A December 1932 Architectural Forum cover story described the evolution of PSFS designs and placed them in geographical, social and musical context:
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“All the branches are comparatively new. Four of them are polite, quiet little buildings, unobtrusive and tasteful, designed by George Howe who has since obviously recognized many of their fundamental improprieties. If “architecture is frozen music,” the Society’s main office is a frowsy minuet, the four little branches, careful, contemporary chords. But the fifth is new; it is slick and sheer and shining, and the society, alive to the tempo of the day, has gone Gershwin.
As the Rhapsody in Blue sets itself apart from such thunder as Siegfried, so does the Society’s new building contrast with the staid neighbors of its location. A few blocks away is the frumpy, bastioned City Hall, from the top of which William Penn looks down unsmilingly upon air conditioning equipment and a mammoth neon sign.”
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Bruce Laverty
Gladys Brooks Curator of Architecture, Athenaeum of Philadelphia
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NEW VIRTUAL LECTURES
Watch from the safety and
comfort of your own home!
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Tuesday, June 2, 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
Saving Neon and Rowhouse Culture
Presented by Len Davidson
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Founder,
Neon Museum of Philadelphia
For over 40 years Len Davidson has produced new neon and collected the old, both in sign and story. His 1999 book "Vintage Neon" is an essential photo archive and cultural history for sign lovers. Len’s interactive talk will examine Philly neon history including his establishment of the Neon Museum of Philadelphia in lower Kensington.
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TICKETS COMING SOON
William Whitaker - Everyday Modernism
Tuesday, June 9, 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
and
Michael Lewis - A Talk on the Work of Frank Furness
Tuesday, June 16, 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
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