Friends Housing Cooperative

Posted by on Sep 9, 2016 in | Comments Off on Friends Housing Cooperative In Philadelphia’s East Poplar neighborhood, at North 8th and North Franklin streets between Brown Street and Fairmount Avenue, sits a rather unassuming block of 19th-century townhouses. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in October 2015, the Friends Housing Cooperative is in fact a truly unique example of historic preservation as a model for urban rehabilitation. The co-op was a...
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Historic Districts in Pennsylvania: An Evolving Sense of Place

Posted by on Jun 6, 2016 in | Comments Off on Historic Districts in Pennsylvania: An Evolving Sense of Place Jim Thorpe, originally named Mauch Chunk, is a small and picturesque borough of well-preserved 19th-century buildings perched on the side of a mountain along the Lehigh River in Carbon County. It once served as an important railroad and coal shipping center. As these industries waned in the 20th century, the town sought new economic purpose by marketing its scenic appeal as the “Switzerland of...
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Modernizing Center City: Philadelphia’s Penn Center

Posted by on Apr 12, 2016 in | Comments Off on Modernizing Center City: Philadelphia’s Penn Center Modernism came to Philadelphia in September 1947. It had been creeping up on the city for some time, but that’s when the citizenry who for decades had come to expect little from the machine that controlled city politics came to see how a modern Philadelphia could look. It was a 10-part vision of Modernism presented by the City Planning Commission’s Better Philadelphia Exhibition that was...
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Louis Kahn and Midcentury Modern Philadelphia

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on Louis Kahn and Midcentury Modern Philadelphia “A city should be a place where a little boy walking through its streets can sense what he would someday like to be.” For Louis I. Kahn, arguably the most influential American architect of the late 20th century, that city was Philadelphia. Kahn spent nearly his entire life in Philadelphia, attending grade school through college, teaching, practicing and designing a number of...
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