In a city as old as Philadelphia, historical buildings designed in the colonial or Victorian styles get a lot of attention. But a yearslong project by researchers at Thomas Jefferson University aims to put a spotlight on the city’s collection of modernist buildings.
Researchers at the university’s Center for the Preservation of Modernism have created an interactive map of about 500 midcentury modern buildings, including the Municipal Services Building at 1401 John F. Kennedy Blvd., Three Penn Center, and the Roundhouse, which the map calls “one of Philadelphia’s most iconic, and most contested, examples of modernism.”
Residential buildings, hotels, schools, houses of worship, libraries, and fire houses are among the structures the map highlights. Jefferson researchers plan to add more than 180 sites in early November. And they’re continuing to comb through records and walk the streets of Philadelphia searching for more.
“It is exciting to think they’re out there,” said Suzanne Singletary, director of the Center for the Preservation of Modernism and a Jefferson professor who specializes in historic preservation and architectural history. “They’ve been pretty much overlooked, and we’re trying to change that.”
Singletary said modernism is an important architectural style that “creates Philadelphia just as much as colonial or Victorian or any other style.” And this map, she said, gives “a sense of the scale and the scope of modernism in Philadelphia.”
Researchers hope bringing attention to the city’s modernist buildings can promote appreciation for the style and help protect structures from demolition.
Midcentury modern buildings generally have clean, straight lines and don’t have ornamentation. Hallmarks include expansive walls of windows, flat roofs, and interconnected interior spaces. Metal, glass, and stone are primary building materials.
These buildings are “characterized by off-the-shelf materials and simple forms,” said Kevin King, a graduate student in Jefferson’s historic preservation program and a member of the steering committee at the Center for the Preservation of Modernism.
“They don’t jump off the street, if you will, in the way some high styles do,” King said. But “both are worthy of appreciation and preservation.”
Paul Steinke, executive director of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, said modernism “is meant to kind of signify a departure from historical architectural styles rooted in European precedent.”
Creating the map
King said the modernism map is “a huge undertaking, and we could not have done it without a huge group of people.”
The Center for the Preservation of Modernism partnered with the Preservation Alliance and the Philadelphia-area chapter of Docomomo US, which advocates for modern buildings and sites. Local architectural photographers contributed some of the photos. The database of the Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project provided a wealth of information.
Jefferson researchers started with a midcentury modern inventory that the Preservation Alliance built more than a decade ago.
The organization created the inventory as part of efforts to nominate modernist buildings for historic preservation, protect them from demolition, and encourage their reuse.
The Preservation Alliance was spurred by the demolition of the Sidney Hillman Medical Center at 2116 Chestnut St., a modernist building constructed in 1950 and designed by architect Louis Magaziner.
The modernism map went live in September after about five years of legwork, and researchers want to expand it to include more sites in Philadelphia and beyond city limits.
Modernist examples
Included on the map are residential buildings, such as the Philadelphian at 2401 Pennsylvania Ave., which is the city’s largest condo building; the Hopkinson House condo building on Washington Square; the Academy House condo building at 1420 Locust St.; and the Parkway House apartment building at 2201 Pennsylvania Ave., which was one of the first luxury apartment buildings built in the city after World War II.
The Landmark Ritz Five movie theater at 214 Walnut St. also is on the map. And so is the U.S. Mint at Fifth and Arch Streets.
Sites include those designed by acclaimed architects such as Louis Kahn; Frank Weise; and Elizabeth Hirsh Fleisher, the first woman in Philadelphia to get an architecture license.
The map has buildings that are on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, ones whose historic nominations have been rejected, and others that haven’t been nominated as historic.
The map also includes buildings that already have been demolished.
Using the map
Users of the map can click on locations to learn about the city’s modernist sites and search by architect or building name, for example.
Jefferson researchers are working to fill in data so that each location includes a photograph, information about the architect or designer, the date a building was constructed, historical notes, and descriptions.
They hope the map can be useful to preservationists, students, and residents who want to know more about the city and its buildings.
Singletary called modernism one of the least understood and appreciated of Philadelphia’s architectural styles.
“Before people start to realize this is something valuable, it could be demolished, because it’s not appreciated,” she said.
The Center for the Preservation of Modernism welcomes submissions of modernist buildings for the map.