How New Formalism has grown on me

John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2009, before the addition of The REACH. Left: The Watergate Complex.

Kennedy Center. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, courtesy of Library of Congress.

Donald Trump's seizure of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, from stocking its board with "yes men" to renaming it after himself to threatening to rip it down if he doesn't get his way with it, has made me see it in a new light.

Kennedy Center at night. Photo by Aude.

Initially dismissing it as the "cross between a concrete candy box and a marble sarcophagus in which the art of architecture lies buried" that Ada Louise Huxtable called it in her New York Times review on September 7, 1971, I now view this Washington venue as more of a jewel-box, a marble temple, and a work of art.

Lincoln Memorial, east side, Washington, D.C. Photo by Martin Falbisoner.

The slender bronze-painted steel columns against the solid Carrara marble exterior wall, complemented by the stacked setback of its top deck from its cantilevering roofline, now present the Kennedy Center to me as sort of a New Formalist reinterpretation of both the columned walkway of the Lincoln Memorial (right) and the riverfront verandah of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate (below), picking up the flat-roofed Acropolis of the former and the sweeping shelter of the latter.

Mount Vernon, west face, Alexandria, Virginia. Photo by Ken Lund.

The Kennedy Center's architect, Edward Durell Stone, himself thought along those lines: “In considering the general building type, I would say that Washington is primarily a city of white buildings in a park-like setting. I would see no reason for departing from that.” (That could be one reason why Trump wants to tear the Center down: it's not "classical" enough for him, given his first term's executive order to make all new government buildings in Washington in the classical style, as he plans to build his White House ballroom and the triumphal arch on Memorial Circle.)

The entrance façade of the Kennedy Center. Photo by Ajay Suresh.

I admit I've had a mite of affection for the Kennedy Center from the start. For one, its gala opening on September 8, 1971, premiered one of my favorite choral works, Leonard Bernstein's Mass, commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for the occasion. The music's blend of avant-garde abstraction and harmonic mellifluence seemed to find its architectural expression in the Center.

Radio City Music Hall (1932), New York. Photo by Smart Destinations.

Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo by George Marks.

Two, Edward Durell Stone was my mother's first employer after she got married and my parents settled in New York. "Hire her!" was the reaction to the charming impression she made at her interview, based on her office efficiency and conversational prowess. So she became Stone's dependable secretary until her maternity leave when I came along.

Initially making New York history in Art Deco with the Radio City Music Hall (above) and Modernism with the Museum of Modern Art (left), Stone went on to reinvent Classicism in a Modernist framework. He and Minoru Yamasaki brought forth the New Formalism – new as Modern, formal as Classical – that would become their trademark, for better or for worse. At its best, it soared architecture in a flight of spindly columns with the heavenly uplift of a Gothic cathedral, Greek temple or Venetian palace, but with bare-bones assembly befitting the New Frontier. At its worst, it collapsed under its own weight amid the flames of exploded airplanes when Yamasaki's World Trade Center telescoped downward on September 11, 2001, leaving shards of neo-Gothic tracery and bones of fleshy bodies in its wake.

Photo by Richard Taylor.

The Kennedy Center is New Formalism at its partial best. Its land-side façade, solid and pure in its marble-wall consistency and lightened up by its regiment of delicate columns, extends a friendly invitation to us to promenade around its parameters before we go inside to see a play, a concert, or an opera. 

Photo by Y.C. Wu.

In a brief but beautiful scene in the 1976 film All The President's Men, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) exits a taxi in front of the Kennedy Center, just as a big crowd is jubilantly exiting a performance there. This gives him a chance to lose himself in the throng and throw off potential pursuers while he changes cabs on his way to his 2 a.m. meeting with Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook), his secret source of information about the June 17, 1972 burglary in the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate complex right next door (see first photo). Though it was unrealistic for a Kennedy Center performance to end as late as 2 a.m., its architecture in the scene had a certain lilt about it, a certain lift, that added to the drama.

Kennedy Center's Grand Foyer. Photo by JohnnyK.

Kennedy Center's Grand Foyer. JFK bust by Robert Berks. Photo by Josh Bowers.

A truly dramatic soar for such a crowd to enjoy is right in the Grand Foyer, which the building's relatively squat, horizontal, ground-hugging stature belies, making it an eye-popping, jaw-dropping surprise for the newcomer. Measuring 630 feet long and 63 feet high, the Grand Foyer is said to have room for the Washington Monument laid on its side along the red-carpeted floor, with 75 feet to spare. 

The ascent of the cathedral ceiling is accentuated by the 16 hand-blown Orrefors crystal chandeliers dangling from above, a gift from Sweden. Together with the salutatory red carpet, they offer guests an internationally warm welcome as a prelude to the Hall of Nations or one of the three auditoriums that comprise the Center.

Hall of Nations, Kennedy Center. Photo by Rupal Desai.

The Hall of Nations extends the welcome with flags of nations with whom the Ufvv.S. has diplomatic relations along its 250-foot-long, 63-foot-high corridor, as a living symbol of Kennedy' s foreign policy goals:

To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support – to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective – to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak – and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run. 

Hall of Nations, Kennedy Center. Photo by Ahmad Karimi.

Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.

We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.

But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course – both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind's final war.

So let us begin anew – remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

— From President John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

The three auditoriums – the Concert Hall, the Opera House, the Eisenhower Theater –  vary in style according to the types of arts that are mounted on their stages. But they all avoid the New Formalism of their housing in the name of fine finishes, to immerse their audiences more fully in the concert, theater or opera experience before them, as contemporary interpretations of classic concert halls, opera houses and theaters. 

The Concert Hall, home to the National Symphony Orchestra, has seating akin to that in the Musikverein in Vienna, and is illuminated with Hadeland crystal chandeliers gifted by the Norwegian government. 

The red velvet Opera House, home to the annual Kennedy Center Honors, boasts a red and gold silk curtain given by the Japanese government and a Lobmeyr crystal chandelier with matching pendants, gifted by the Austrian government. 

The Eisenhower Theater, named for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who signed the National Cultural Center Act into law on September 2, 1958, securing the planning of the Center, mainly puts on plays, musicals, smaller operas, ballet, and modern dance.

But I'm not much for the Center's riverfront face. Its ceiling-high windows look uninviting to water-commuters and interrupt the façade's Carrara marble continuity...

Kennedy Center on Potomac River. Photo by Brooks Kraft.

...though this was partially redeemed by the row of 40 weeping willow trees planted in memory of the 35th President, that were cut down last year, reportedly due to decay and the shallow beds that gave them short lifespans. There's talk about replacing them with weeping cherry blossoms, but fingers crossed...

...and by its distant view on the Potomac at night, especially when the sea and sky form a dark background to the light of the living symbol of JFK's passion for and commitment to the arts in full view, as if waiting with bated breath for Trump's last term to end so it can reaffirm the artistic identity Kennedy and Stone intended for it.

2 Columbus Circle

2 Columbus Circle by Edward Durell Stone, c.1964.

A Stone work of New Formalism that I sheepishly admit I miss, now that it's been altered beyond recognition in a shameless, sloppy way, is 2 Columbus Circle, aka the Huntington Hartford Gallery of Modern Art, in New York City. Lambasted by Ada Louise Huxtable in 1964 as resembling "a die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops [that] begs for a canal or garden setting," its creative use of elongated arches, a palazzo arcade with oculi, and a concave curve with the circle had a way of reducing historical forms to their barren geometries with a circusy playfulness that definitely made one stop and stare, like it or lump it. And its plain off-white walls of exposed aggregate concrete – presumably used to display giant banners of upcoming or current art exhibits – gave it a visual flexibility akin to the ever-changing decorations of the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, or the ever-more-changing LED display ads in Times Square. Regardless, I miss it now. Because look what they did with it:

2 Columbus Circle today. Photo by Stefan Weisman.

Kudos to a botch-up job by architect Brad Cloepfil for the Museum of Arts and Design in 2008, 2 Columbus Circle now looks like an ink-spill from Charlie Brown's pen in an attempt to write "HI" to his Pen-Pal. This has to be the weirdest fenestration in New York history. The angular protrusions of the windows on Marcel Breuer's Whitney Museum were weird for their time, in their radical disruption of Madison Avenue trad, but have acquired a sculptural appeal over the years that makes this building (now Sotheby's Global Headquarters, housing auction spaces and public art galleries) a pioneering milestone of modernism. But this mess will never pass for innovative architecture. It will only serve to bring up memories of that "die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops," which at least brought some of the high spirits of Piccadilly Circus to Columbus Circle, as a rare moment when New York architecture had a sense of humor.

The Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow Center for International and Public Affairs at USC

The Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow Center for International and Public Affairs at USC. Photo by Bobak Ha'Eri.

The Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow Center for International
and Public Affairs at USC. Photo by Sitao Xiang.

This New Formalist cloister by Stone, formerly the Von KleinSmid Center at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, may be familiar for its use as a film and TV shooting location. In the movie The Graduate (1967), it was the setting for Elaine Robinson's classroom at UC Berkeley, when Benjamin Braddock followed her through the cloister all the way to her class, pressuring her to get her birth certificate in preparation for the marriage he wished to have with her. In The Paper Chase TV series (1978-86), it was a backdrop for the nameless Law School where Hart, Ford, and Bell struggled to meet the demands of the tyrannical Professor Kingsfield.

Photo by Sharon Mollerus.

In reality, it is one of the best mid-20th-century interpretations of the Roman cloister and temple. In fact, it may be Stone's New Formalist masterpiece, for the way it gives students and faculty a sense of logical direction through its corridor and temple courtyard of evenly spaced arches to the academic destination it invites them to at the end of the archway – as the Romans did.

Photo by Nick Grasu

It is also remarkable for the way it invites students and faculty to come forward and partake of its programs in anthropology, art history, international relations, political science, globalization, and applied social sciences by landmarking itself on the USC campus with its international peace symbol of a globe-crowned tower tapered with concave-curved sides, as a guiding light. Its status as Stone's New Formalist masterpiece was cemented in "Stone" in 2021, when it was renamed in honor of Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow, Native American tribal historian and chief of the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation, who earned his master’s degree in anthropology at USC in 1939. 

“Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow was an ambassador and bridge builder who used education to create intercultural understanding and promote collaboration between peoples and communities,” said USC President Carol L. Folt. “Likewise, this building is an important nexus of interdisciplinary study that unites people across differences. Naming the building — and establishing a scholarship program — in his honor pays tribute to his life and legacy and ensures future generations of students have the opportunity to learn his remarkable story... 

“This building serves as a crossroads for different cultures and communities from around the world, and it is a gathering place for our students. We wanted to rename it for an individual who embodies the qualities we strive for at USC, and when we asked the university community to nominate people for this honor, the selection of this beloved and inspiring figure — one of our most cherished alumni — became clear. I know the USC community will welcome this name with the enthusiasm and joy it deserves.”

Kennedy Center. Photo by Shekhar Mehta.

Edward Durell Stone's personal brand of New Formalism has grown on me over the years all the way from pre-childhood to the present, by virtue of my mother's early connection with him, the roots of the style in his pioneering Art Deco and Modernist designs, and the style's ultimate function as a bridge-builder among nations, architecturally, materially, politically, artistically, and academically. 

Stone found that happy architectural medium among disparate disciplines and worlds as a simple but elegant expression of the peace the liberal arts and positive international relations can bring to the world if judiciously applied. Donald Trump's self-serving interference with that process should be a wake-up call to reaffirm these positive goals that were originally set for the Kennedy Center by its namesake himself.

Thank you for visiting.
I welcome your comments!

Sources:

Alexander, Jimmy, "From George Washington to JFK: A History of the Kennedy Center," WTOP News, September 18, 2026, https://wtop.com/dc/2026/09/from-george-washington-to-jfk-a-history-of-the-kennedy-center/

Backus, Alex, "Claim Trump Cut Down Weeping Willow Trees Outside Kennedy Center Debunked," Newsweek, September 1, 2026, https://www.newsweek.com/claim-trump-cut-down-weeping-willow-trees-outside-kennedy-center-debunked-12393047

"Ben asks Elaine to Marry Him - The Graduate," Jinghong Lin (Fiona), YouTube, posted April 8, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZJ2LE2OldA

Dunlap, David W. "Ada Louise Huxtable's New York," The New York Times, January 8, 2013, https://archive.nytimes.com/cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/ada-louise-huxtables-new-york/

Gomez, Melissa, "A USC building stripped of eugenicist’s name will instead honor a Native American alumnus," Los Angeles Times, November 18, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-11-18/usc-native-american-alumnus-building-renamed

"Kennedy Center," Wikipedia, last edited on 17 October 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Center

"Kennedy Center: Frequently Asked Questions," National Trust for Historic Preservation, March 23, 2026, https://savingplaces.org/stories/kennedy-center-faqs

Kennedy, John F., and Ted Sorensen, "President John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address (1961)," Milestone Documents, National Archives, last reviewed on February 8, 2022, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-john-f-kennedys-inaugural-address

Lindberg, Eric, "Historic campus building to be renamed in honor of alumnus Joseph Medicine Crow," USC Today, November 18, 2021, https://today.usc.edu/joseph-medicine-crow-building/

Scott, Pamela, and Antoinette J. Lee, "Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts," Society of Architectural Historians Archipedia, https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/DC-01-FB14

"2 Columbus Circle," Wikipedia, last edited on 18 August 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Columbus_Circle

Harvard's hideaway

What does "Harvard" bring to mind?

The High Victorian Gothic soar of Memorial Hall?

The glimmering white spire of Memorial Chapel?

The Teutonic clock tower of Adolphus Busch Hall?

The crimson-crowned cupola of Dunster House?

The colossal columns and spine-tingling steps of Widener Library?

The twisty-turny paths and exploding brises-soleil of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts?

Do a glass pyramid, a copper cylinder, and a golden-ball clock tower come to mind at all? If not, no worries. These sculptural components of the Harvard Business School Class of 1959 Chapel are so far off the beaten path, literally and figuratively, that they're the university's best-kept secret: a little-known hideaway in nature, peace and light enveloped in pure geometric form.

Built in 1992 from a maverick design by Moshe Safdie and the vision of Dean John H. McArthur to introduce a community-generator to the otherwise corporate, business-as-usual Harvard Business School, the Chapel combines variations on the glass polygon of I.M. Pei's Louvre Pyramid, the cylindrical drum of Eero Saarinen's MIT Chapel, and the scintillating orb of the Times Square Ball in a confounding contrast of forms, surfaces, curves, angles, solids and voids that makes you stop and stare, especially if you've never been in these parts before.

Then again, unlike the perpetual pedestrian crisscross through Harvard Yard, Harvard Business School isn't exactly a tourist mecca, being far and away across the Charles in Allston.

But if you've come this far and think you're seeing things when this it-came-from-another-planet contraption crosses your path, think again as you enter its spatial dimensions – the light-filtered chapel in the patina-green cylinder, the terraced garden in the glass pyramid, or the bronze ball that drops like the sand in an hourglass as the hours pass.

The multitiered sunken garden offers a panoply of peace-inducing transports of delight: terraces of lush garden beds and flowering trees, a bubbling waterfall, a koi pond replete with rainbow-hued fish, shallow pools teeming with aquatic flora, square steppingstones along the groundcover, stair-flights to the balcony entrance to the chapel, window panoramas of the metamorphoses of seasons and sunrises and sunsets, and lots of places to sit and assimilate the restorative powers of nature, study amid the calming trickle-splash of the water, or contemplate the tensile crisscross of the diamond panes and the circular structure of the chapel. This is how the pyramid bridges the gap between outside and inside, with the garden as the intermediary and the verdant and patina greens as the binding elements.

Other tropical delights that merge outside with inside include plants that grew in Cyprus, Greece, during the childhood of Chapel Caretaker Agni Thurner, now Manager of Executive Education Building Services; native vegetation from the Americas; and arboricola, ferns, liriope, lemons, oranges and tangerines. All form a miniature arboretum that thrives all seasons.

The nondenominational chapel with Shaker-style chairs filters raking light and rainbow effects through a skylight of thin windows and long prisms. Designed by Charles Ross, this light-sculpture radiates the refracted sunshine across the 27-foot-high scalloped concrete walls, creating an illusion of soft, billowy curtains. 

This effect creates a serene spiritual ambiance for weddings, chamber music, prayer, contemplation, meditation, or just winding down.

The 26-foot, 11-inch-high "sun clock" tower, designed by German artist Karl Schlamminger, is inscribed on its black granite base with the names of the Harvard Business School Class of 1959 – Dean McArthur's graduating class – that donated the chapel and clock to the campus. 

This innovative timepiece marks the hour by ascending and descending its golden bronze ball by an electronic motor gradually throughout the day, such that the ball's arrival at a particular line on the glass enclosure indicates the time of day. 

Like a sunrise and a sunset, the ball reaches the summit of the tower at high noon and sets at the base toward the evening.

Beyond relaxation, meditation, contemplation, and reminders of the time of day, the Harvard Business School Class of 1959 Chapel aimed to "recognize the wholeness of its members’ lives — people who may be grieving for a parent, or worried about their children, or in need of withdrawal from the pressure of work or study, or who wish to celebrate their religious traditions,” chapel planners told Harvard Magazine in 1993. 

Or, in the Chapel's engraved words, "...to make our community complete and remind us of our higher purpose and ideals." Harvard's many landmarks fulfill that purpose, from Victorian to Neoclassical to Germanic to Georgian to Modern, but none rebalance the soul and refresh the spirit like the Class of 1959 Chapel.

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

Sources:

Cautela, Mark, "School News: Historical Places and Cool Spaces," Harvard Business School, September 1, 2026, https://www.hbs.edu/news/historical-places-and-cool-spaces

"Class of 1959 Chapel," SmartGuide, https://app.smartguide.app/en/destinations/f0976a22-07ea-40fb-ab21-b9d6d42e3c12/harvard-business-school/places/6f16eb44-97b8-43da-8a8b-c312c997869a/class-of-1959-chapel

Grandaw, Sam, "Class of 1959 Chapel," Atlas Obscura, July 26, 2019, https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/class-of-1959-chapel

"Harvard Business School Class of 1959 Chapel," Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992, Safdie Architects, https://www.safdiearchitects.com/projects/harvard-business-school-class-of-1959-chapel

Lincoln, Rose, "Hidden spaces: The Class of 1959 Chapel at HBS," The Harvard Gazette, April 30, 2014, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/04/hidden-spaces-the-class-of-1959-chapel-at-hbs/

"MBA Class of 1959 Chapel," Harvard Business School, https://www.hbs.edu/about/campus-and-culture/campus-built-on-philanthropy/class-of-1959-chapel

"The Class of 1959 Chapel," Wikipedia, last edited on 31 August 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Class_of_1959_Chapel

Too much independence

Independence Hall, Philadelphia, c.1948. Courtesy of LIFE Magazine.

My July 7 post celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of our Declaration of Independence in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, neglected to mention the considerable sacrifices made to showcase Independence Hall independently in a historical theme-park context. I stumbled upon this Instagram image of the Hall in its pre-park years, and it recalled a snatch of conversation I'd overheard in college: "When they created Independence National Historical Park, they tore down a lot of Victorian buildings." Yes, preservation of the site of the founding of our country and the ratification of our Constitution was, ironically, one of its city's worst historic preservation efforts.

Here's some of what was lost for Independence Mall, and what tour guides and Independence Visitors' Center staff don't tell you about:

President's House (1767)

President's House, sketch by John Fanning Watson, pre-1823.

Yes, the remains of one of Independence Hall's contemporaries were unknowingly sacrificed, with little left of the original, but perhaps just enough to allow a full reconstruction rather than the "ghost" exhibit that's there now. The house was built by widow Mary Lawrence Masters as a dowry house for her eldest daughter and became the home of Richard Penn, grandson of Pennsylvania founder William Penn, when she married him. 

President's House, lithograph by William L. Breton, 1830.

Penn entertained George Washington and other Continental Congress delegates there, who entrusted Penn to deliver Congress's Olive Branch Petition to King George III in an 11th-hour effort to avert war with Great Britain. While Penn and his wife were away in England to do the honors, Gen. Sir William Howe occupied the house during the 1777-1778 British occupation of Philadelphia, and Gen. Benedict Arnold made it his headquarters in 1778 two years before his defection to the British Army. Revolutionary War financier Robert Morris purchased the house in 1780, and, yes, "George Washington slept here" as Morris's houseguest during Washington's presidency of the four-month 1787 Constitutional convention. 

Sketch of the President's House Replica for the
Sesquicentennial Exposition, R. Brognard Okie, 1925.

While serving as our first President in the temporary national capital of Philadelphia, Washington rented the house as his residence, bringing in nine African slaves from his Mount Vernon estate in Virginia, and gradually replacing most of them with German indentured servants. His slaveless successor, John Adams, also lived there until the capital transferred to Washington and he moved into the not-yet-completed White House on November 1, 1800, as the first President to occupy the White House.

President's House site, Market Street between
Fifith & Sixth Streets, south side. Photo c. 1903-08.

Following the gut-renovation and partial demolition of the President's House for retail use beginning in 1804, including Nathaniel Burt's hardware stores in 1832 and John Wanamaker's first clothing store in 1836, original party walls survived until they were unknowingly demolished in 1951 as the preliminary site clearance for Independence Mall. Archaeological excavations revealed the L-shaped foundations of the Presidential House's kitchen, the remains of its icehouse pit, the main house's rear wall, the curved foundations of the bow window of the State Dining Room that Washington had added, and enough vestiges for an open-air "ghost" pavilion of suggestions of the house, President's House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation, built on the site by 2010.

Memorial at the site of the President's House. Courtesy of RevolutionaryPA.com.

The pavilion places mock window and door casings, fireplaces, chimneys and walls at their estimated original locations to let visitors imagine the house while perusing the exhibits on the roles of slaves in Washington's household and slavery in general, until Trump's executive order had the exhibits removed this year.

Memorial to Washington's nine slaves (their names are carved in the wall).

Their removal is an outright denial of the history that Abraham Lincoln famously said "we cannot escape" in his Second Annual Message to Congress on December 1, 1862, less than three months after issuing his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation

Independence Hall, Philadelphia, pre-1910.

giving Confederate states 100 days to end their rebellion and free their slaves. And more history is denied here, like everywhere else on Independence Mall: the President's House itself, which reportedly contained enough of its original walls to be reconstructed, just as the 19th-century growth of Philadelphia around Independence Hall contained enough buildings to merit preservation of the intact Central Business District that had taken shape around the Hall over the years, as a living demonstration of the evolution of the city from a colonial village to a prosperous yet aesthetically diverse and attractive metropolis – a true City of Brotherly Love.

Jayne Building (1848-1851)

Jayne Buildng, c.1859, Library Company of Philadelphia,
Frederick De Bourg Richards Photograph Collection.

Considered to be Philadelphia's first skyscraper, the Jayne Building was designed by William L. Johnston as a Gothic Revival edifice of Quincy granite featuring strongly vertical lines and a castle-like tower crowned with crenellations, expressing the upward mobility of the edifice, its owner, and its city.

When Johnston died of tuberculosis during the building's construction, Thomas Ustick Walter supervised the rest of it and designed the building's six-story wings. Afterwards he was named Architect of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., for which he designed its iconic dome and House and Senate wings.

Dr. David Jayne, a physician, owned the Jayne Building as the headquarters for his patent medicines, which he claimed could treat cancer, gout, lung and skin diseases, rheumatism, scrofula, scurvy, syphilis and ulcers, dubious as his asseverations were.

Architect Charles E. Peterson advocated for the preservation of the Jayne Building and many other 19th-century structures in this district earmarked for clearance for Independence Mall. Peterson's argument was that the Jayne Building had inspired the design of more skyscrapers, particularly those of high-rise pioneer Louis Henry Sullivan, whose office was once across the street from it, and who went on to change the face of the Chicago, St. Louis, Buffalo and New York skyscraper to an honest expression of their rise, pier structure, and Celtic Revival ornamentation. But, in the eyes of Independence Mall's planners, no tower could out-rise that of Independence Hall. Today the Museum of the American Revolution occupies the Jayne Building's site, offering no clues to the skyscraper revolution its predecessor led.

Penn Mutual Building (1850-1851)

The Penn Mutual Building, c.1951.

The Penn Mutual Building stood near the Jayne Building and was considerably dwarfed by it, but was still distinctively handsome as Philadelphia's first cast-iron building. It featured an innovative method of cast-iron plate sheathing with an advanced jointing and bolting technique, round-arched windows and doors, decorative window hoods, bracketed cornices and pressed-iron reliefs defining its floors, and a Mansard roof and corner location giving it enough semblance of height and independence for it to stand out on its block. Peterson wanted this gem preserved too, but its stylistic competition for attention with Independence Hall was unacceptable in the sight of the planners, so down it went around 1956.

20-22, 24 South 5th Street (c.1850-1860)

20-22 South 5th Street, c.1949.

24 South 5th Street, c.1949.

These mid-19th-century brick and masonry buildings, cleared for Independence Mall as part of "Mall Project A," housed such businesses as the Bulkley, Raiguel & Co. paper manufacturer and rag dealer, Hershman's Men's Clothing, Ezra Levinson Paper, the American Shuffleboard Company, and the Variety Sandwich Shop. No. 20-22 is noteworthy for its corbelled brickwork and its brick paneling hinting at its internal structure, as well as its vertical stack of "Juliet" fire-escape balconies. No. 24 has a crisp simplicity to its façade, effecting a smooth transition between the left-hand cast-iron building and the right-hand brick masonry edifice. The wooden water-tower, recalling the iconic ones in New York City, is another distinctive feature. 

Guarantee Trust & Safe Deposit Company Building (1873-1875)

Guarantee Trust & Safe Deposit Company, published in Moses
King's Philadelphia and Notable Philadelphians (1901).

Designed by Frank Furness before his renowned Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and most closely resembling it with its squared twin turrets, the Guarantee Trust & Safe Deposit Company Building was designed to offer secure storage for currency, securities, jewelry, and silver. One of the most imposing structures on Chestnut Street, rising like a commanding castle in front of Carpenter's Court (rear), it was built in Italianate polychrome brick, carved stone, and encaustic tile trimmings in a square layout with two bold tower pavilions topped by square Mansard roofs. Pioneering a fireproofing technique for secure storage of valuables, the building used as little wood as possible. But its solid stone structure, fortress-like presence, and stylistic flourishes (probably outdoing Carpenter Hall and Independence Hall in visual prominence, in the eyes of the planners) didn't stop its demolition in 1957.

Provident Life & Trust Building (1876-1879, 1888-1890)

Located catercorner from the Guarantee Trust & Safe Deposit Company Building, the Provident Life & Trust Building was also designed by Furness before his Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, with a more elaborate Gothic château presence sprouting gables, turrets, arches, compressed columns, and a floating corner turret in a multitude of directions, as an ornate circus of forms and finials. The building was extended with the triangle-capped, grand-arched Provident Building next door, which was demolished in 1945.

Perhaps the Independence Mall planners feared the Provident Life & Trust Building would outshine Independence Hall in historical and architectural prominence, so down it went in 1959-1960. The Omni Hotel occupies its site today.

Drexel & Co. Building (1885)

Drexel & Co. Building, in an undated image.

Erected on the site of the original Library Hall of the Library Company of Philadelphia (built c.1790) and razed in 1956 for the Library Hall's reconstruction, the Drexel & Co. Building was home to one of the city's leading investment banks. Its dominant partner, Anthony Joseph Drexel, founded Drexel, Morgan & Co. in 1871, later J.P. Morgan & Co. (now JPMorgan Chase), with John Pierpont "J.P." Morgan as his junior partner. Drexel also founded Drexel University in Philadelphia in 1891. The building was noteworthy for its "twin" Renaissance Revival façade interconnected with a smaller central one with a Diocletian window, forming a pleasing composition expressing the influence of the banking industry. The Signers' Garden marks its site today.

Irvin Building (1890-1931)

Irvin Building, c.1912, before its expansion.

The last of the Central Business District "holdouts" to go for Independence Mall – and the largest to be torn down, in 1974 – the Irvin Building was a jigsaw composite of two structures that solemnly expressed the gradual growth of their owner, the Fire Association of Philadelphia, an alliance of five volunteer hose companies and 11 volunteer engine companies formed to cooperate in first responses and to provide a new kind of fire insurance. First built in 1912 (right) as an expansion of an 1890 building from a neoclassical design by Edgar V. Seeler, it soon proved to be inadequate for the Fire Association's rapid growth and acquisition of smaller insurers.

Irvin Building, expanded in 1931.

So an obscure architect named Ernest Matthewson was hired to expand the building, which he did by replicating its neoclassical façade on the addition's initial six floors and transitioning its style to a muted Art Deco for a sequence of 10th-floor and 14th-floor setbacks for visual variation in its massing, raising the building to a total of 17 stories. The skyscraper was renamed for Elihu C. Irvin, former president of the Fire Association of Philadelphia. Following its name-change to Reliance Insurance Company and its relocation to larger quarters, the company leased the Irvin Building to the Chilton Book Company before plans for Independence National Historical Park were announced in preparation for the Bicentennial 20 years on. Razed in 1974, its site now contains a model 18th-century garden.

Independence National Historical Park in its early stages in the
mid-1960s, with the Irvin Building still standing on the right.

Clearly dwarfing the Colonial structures of Independence Mall, the Irvin Building typified the soaring setback "Superman" skyscraper of the 1930s, bringing the New York aesthetic of the Daily News Building and the Empire State Building into Philly as a towering symbol of the growth of fire insurance and its guardianship of the city.

Independence Hall, c.1952.

By 1969, 143 buildings had been razed for Independence Mall, so Philadelphia could re-create its Colonial city for the Bicentennial. This ironic combo of historic preservation with "urban renewal" favored the latter, in league with Boston's bulldozing of Scollay Square for Government Center and the West End for Charles River Park.

Independence Hall in 1940 and 2010.

As a result, Independence Mall strangely looks more like a football field than a Colonial village, as if pandering to the contemporary taste for recreational space rather than showcasing the Colonial predilection for grazing meadows, pastures, farms and gardens. This awkward arrangement focuses all our attention on the main attraction the land was cleared for, Independence Hall, which was given too much independence on its site. It therefore seems lonely on its void of green, barren of the buildings that once integrated it into a panoply of historic edifices that brought a rich tapestry of stylistic diversity to Philadelphia, as a logical, gradual outgrowth of the Colonial landmarks that were its foundations. Which once again proves that a few isolated Colonial shrines doth not an historic city make. A truly historic city tells a story about its growth and evolution, from Colonial to Federal to Victorian to Modern times, through preserved architectural representations of all those periods in its history, not vapid Disney-esque theme parks that tell only a smidgen of the story to restless tourists.

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

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