Architecture at Every Turn, Walking Tours Reveal the Heart and Soul of Philadelphia Through the Ages

By Catherine J. Barrier

Philadelphia is known as “the City of Brotherly Love” and as “the Cradle of American Democracy”, but it is also rich in architecture.

The City of Philadelphia offers outstanding examples of architecture, from works by the Colonial-era and carpenter-architects to modern masterpieces by Howe and Lescaze, Louis I. Kahn, and Rafael Vinoly. Through its centuries of history, the city has been home to an ever-increasing number of distinct businesses and ethnic communities, each erecting its needed and preferred buildings and creating its desired landscaped areas, until today Philadelphia is teeming with a wealth of architectural and landscaped beauty. One organization, the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, the so-called “principle public steward of the historic landmarks of the Philadelphia area”, is not only working to safeguard these treasures but to help others learn more about them and appreciate them more. One way the Alliance does this is by offering regular architectural walking tours.

While this award-winning tour program offers architectural walking tours through October 31, this Labor Day weekend, three (maybe four) specific 1-1/2- to 2-hour tours will take place, all designed to interpret the past, present, and future of the Philadelphia area. On Saturday, September 4, at 10:00 a.m., the Littlest Streets Fitler Square tour will begin at the southwest corner of Fitler Square, 24th and Pine Streets. That same day, the Gilded Age Philadelphia walking tour will commence at 2:00 p.m., departing from the steps of the Bellevue Stratford Hotel at 200 South Broad Street. On Sunday, September 5th, at 10:00 a.m., those interested in taking the Society Hill Stroll tour will meet at the northeast corner of 2nd and Spruce Streets, and later in the day, at 2:00 p.m. another architectural walking tour will be offered (to be determined; check Web site, see below). The tours will focus on the architecture, urban design, and social history of the specific areas. No reservations are needed; go directly to the tour starting points; tours are conducted rain or shine. Adults: $10; Students: $8; Children 10 and under: Free with an adult; Preservation Alliance Members (with membership card): $5. Payment: cash or check made payable to “Preservation Alliance”. Other self-guided tours are also available (see the Web site) and private tours as well. For more information, see http://www.preservationalliance.com/, call (215) 546-1146, or e-mail to tours@preservationalliance.com.

“Philadelphia is not just the Liberty Bell,” said Paula Spilner, the Preservation Alliance’s Volunteer Tour Coordinator. “It’s a museum of 18th-to 20th-century architecture.”

“The tours don’t assume any knowledge; they’re not for professionals but for the average person,” said Spilner, who moved from New York to Philadelphia in the early 1990’s when her husband got a job in the area. She started taking the architecture courses given by the Center for Architecture and soon became a guide for these walking tours even before they were managed by the Preservation Alliance. “Five years ago, I took over the managing of the walks, handling the scheduling of the walking tours and the guides and fielding questions about them.”

“Originally, the tours were started by the Foundation for Architecture, probably over 20 years ago,” said John Gallery, the Executive Director of the Preservation Alliance. “The Foundation then went out of existence in the early 1990’s.” Several other organizations then managed the tours for several years. “Last year, we took them over because I’d wanted to run them for a long time. The mission of the Preservation Alliance is to educate people about the value of the architecture in Philadelphia. [Running the walking tours] fit really well with our mission.”

“I’ve been on and given some of these tours,” said Gallery. “What’s interesting about these tours is that they’re given by volunteers, by people who love Philadelphia and are personally connected to these places. It’s like a neighbor giving a tour. The out-of-towners seem to especially appreciate the personalized nature of the tours—having someone who really knows the area [as a tour guide].”

“The volunteer tour guides are usually ‘self-selected’, [but they must then] take a 10-week course which covers architecture from William Penn in 1682 through the 20th-century,” said Paula Spilner, who herself has been a guide for 17 years. “The tour guides are people from all walks of life; they are enthusiasts, lay people who are usually quite passionate about Philadelphia and architecture.”

“[As a guide] you’re also meeting people,” said Gallery. “[. . .] you show up at the appointed spot. You never know how many people will show up, but usually, there are about 15 or 20—it’s a good size [group]. You can really engage with [the] people.”

“The tour program was named ‘Best in Philadelphia’ by Philadelphia Magazine in 2008,” said Spilner.

“Many people know the big places [in Philadelphia], but we have several ‘Littlest Streets’ tours, and these tours, with the charming 2- and 3-story homes, that’s the thing that gives Philadelphia its distinctive character,” said Gallery. “It gives you a different glimpse of Philadelphia as a city.”

Littlest Streets Fitler Square Walking Tour

The first Labor Day weekend architectural walking tour takes place in one of the “Littlest Streets” areas—Fitler Square, located 5 blocks east of the Schuylkill River and just a few blocks southwest of Rittenhouse Square. “It’s a neighborhood with a fascinating history,” said Spilner.

Fitler Square was originally a textile-manufacturing and transportation center. In the 1830’s and 1840’s, Irish immigrants began to make the neighborhood their home—as workers in the coal trade, as weavers, and as textile workers—making cloth and rugs. At that time, poverty was rampant in the area. When the Reading Railroad began to shift the coal work from the area east to the Delaware River at Port Richmond, the neighborhood’s focus became residential housing; it became the home of some of the city’s most prominent citizens. Some of the area’s surviving historical residences include the home of the naturalist Edward Drinker Cope, the home and then library and museum of the Rosenbach brothers, and the home of the popular war journalist Richard Harding Davis. And the Naval Home is also just a few blocks south and west of Fitler Square.

In 1896, by city ordinance, Philadelphia created a brickyard at Fitler Square and named the area to honor Edwin H. Fitler, a popular mayor of Philadelphia (1887 to 1891). Fitler was also a Republican presidential elector for Pennsylvania in 1876, the vice-president of the Manufacturer’s Club, and an active member of both the Philadelphia Club and the Art Club of Philadelphia. But the neighborhood had deteriorated again by the early 1920’s, only to be rehabilitated again later, with changing styles and remarkably varied architecture. “Now, [the area]’s pretty gentrified,” said Spilner.

There are several other “Littlest Streets” tours scheduled for this fall, namely the Littlest Streets of Broad [Street] on Saturday, September 11 at 10:00 a.m. and the Littlest Streets of East of Broad on Saturday, October 23 at 10:00 a.m.

These “Littlest Streets” areas of the city hold seldom-seen architectural treasures and charm. “You can walk by [these littlest streets east of Broad] and completely miss this neighborhood of tiny little alleys and Trinity houses,” said Spilner.

Gilded Age Philadelphia Walking Tour

The next scheduled Labor Day weekend walking tour is the Gilded Age Philadelphia tour. In the late 19th-century, wealthy industrialists started amassing huge fortunes and turned to architecture to express their increasing money and power. They began to display their wealth in opulent buildings during this period, which American author Mark Twain called “The Gilded Age”. During this time, the now famous architects Richard Morris Hunt, Stanford White, and Frank Furness designed palatial homes and elegant hotels mirroring the ostentatious European style known as Beaux Arts.

“[The Gilded Age Philadelphia walking tour] features three of the older buildings in Center Philadelphia that have become hotels,” said Spilner. “These include the Hotel Atop the Bellevue, or the Bellevue Stratford, from the early 20th-century, the Ritz Carlton—the former Girard Trust Bank building, and the former PSFS building [now the Loews Hotel]—as well as other late 19th-century buildings, such as the Union Building.”

This tour provides explanation as to how these buildings have been architecturally maintained and details the history of the transformation of some of these into buildings with completely new uses.

Society Hill Stroll Walking Tour

The first Sunday, September 5th tour is entitled Society Hill Stroll. “Society Hill is one of the oldest neighborhoods of Philadelphia, and it is a unique story of urban revival,” said Spilner. “There are two facets to its history: first, it has the largest collection of late 18th- and early 19th-century Federal and Georgian architecture in the United States—it shows the variety of residential architecture from the Revolutionary War to about 1820—and second, [the homes] have all been beautifully restored.”

Society Hill was named after the 18th-century Free Society of Traders, which had offices on Front Street, on the hill. “Society Hill was the first stop for immigrants—Polish and Jewish especially—in Philadelphia,” said Spilner, “and many of the older homes were eventually divided up into small apartments. The area deteriorated over time. Then in the 1950’s, when Edmund Bacon was the Chairman of the Planning Commission in Philadelphia, the city of Philadelphia spearheaded an improvement program, a campaign to upgrade and revive the area. The city sold the homes—many times for just a few thousand dollars—to private owners who would renovate them and live in them. The area soon began to improve, and the properties began to increase in value, until today Society Hill has become one of the most conveniently located, affluent areas in Philadelphia.” This 1950’s improvement program was part of the first national urban renewal programs aimed at the preservation of historical buildings.

The Preservation Alliance was formed in 1996, by a merger of the Preservation Coalition, originally a grassroots organization founded by a group of women concerned with protecting certain structures in Center City Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Historic Preservation Corporation, an organization created by the Old Philadelphia Development Corporation to pool the cooperative efforts of business, civic and government leadership in order to rehabilitate and develop historic properties through the creation of a façade easement program, a program to assist historic religious properties, and the management of certain historic sites. The merger took place with the help of both the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the William Penn Foundation

The mission of the nonprofit Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia is to promote the appreciation, protection, revitalization and appropriate use and development of the Philadelphia region’s historic buildings, communities, and landscapes. Its 2002 strategic plan was drafted with the cooperation of preservation organizations in all the Pennsylvania counties adjoining the city.

Some of the other architectural walking tours offered through October 31 are City Hall to City Hall, Up and Over the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, Victorian Philadelphia West of Broad, Rittenhouse Square East, Powelton, Jewish Philadelphia-Colonial Times, Underground Philadelphia, Beaux Arts Philadelphia, Around Washington Square, Avenue of the Arts, and even out-of-Philadelphia walking tours, such as one in Merion on Sunday, October 10 at 2:00 pm. and another in Phoenixville on Sunday, October 24 at 2:00 p.m. (check Web site for more details).

“I love Philadelphia architecture because Philadelphia is unusual as a city in the U.S.,” said Gallery. “It has some of the finest examples of all styles of architecture produced in the United States. No other city can say this.” This being the case, an architectural walking tour in Philadelphia this Labor Day weekend may be just the right “something different” to enjoy.

© 2010 by Catherine J. Barrier.  All rights reserved.