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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Aaron Wunsch
19th Street Baptist Church
1249-53 South 19th Street, Philadelphia
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My building of choice is 19th Street Baptist Church - a building whose striking design, rich associations, and ability to spawn unlikely coalitions make it a model for the kind of idealistic, motivated, and socially conscious preservation work Philadelphia so desperately needs. The church landed at the corner of 19th and Titan Streets in 1874, an alien green projectile launched by old-line Protestants (St. Peter's in Society Hill) into a burgeoning red-brick neighborhood with working-class roots and foreseeably Catholic inclinations. The short-lived but now-celebrated architectural firm of Furness & Hewitt was responsible for the strange craft's design. It originally wore the name The Memorial Church of the Holy Comforter in honor of its sponsor's mother.
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The first congregation left long ago. In their wake came different stewards, voyagers in the Great Migration who brought new life to so many of the city's aging religious structures. Along with a baptismal pool and other physical changes came passionate sermons, a legendary choir, and visiting dignitaries such as a young Jesse Jackson, Sr. Sadly, that era, too, has come to an end. Facing cascading maintenance costs, a gentrification juggernaut, and dwindling parking, 19th Street's Baptists have moved to more hospitable climes. Yet their fondness for their old home persists. Unlike many congregations that have "cashed out" under similar pressures, members of 19th Street Baptist have pulled back from such a plan. They did so in part because of their memories - of weddings and funerals, of songs sung, of children reared - but also because of encouragement and aid given by civic leaders, the preservation community, and enthusiastic graduate students. While the building's fate remains uncertain, the friendships and good will it has fostered are not. If nothing else, we may now dismiss a charge made by a City attorney at a Historical Commission meeting last year: "We all know what's going to happen here." No, we don't. It is precisely that attitude that has mired Philadelphia preservation in a mix of cynicism, cronyism, and resignation for so long. God willing, we may live to see another day.
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Aaron Wunsch, PhD
Associate Professor in the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation and in the Department of Landscape Architecture, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania
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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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