Pennsylvania Magazine of HISTORY and BIOGRAPHY
THE Pennsylvania Magazine OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY VOLUME LXV APRIL, 1941 NUMBER TWO Some Qree\T(evival Architects of Philadelphia HILADELPHIA saw alike the birth and the death of Greek Revival architecture in America: its birth in the Bank of Penn- Psylvania, which Latrobe designed in the spring of 17985 its death—or should one say its final swan song?—in the Ridgeway Branch of the Library Company, designed in the 1870's by Addison Hutton, far out on South Broad Street. And, in the years between, several of the most important Greek Revival architects in the coun- try established their homes in Philadelphia, found there a most profitable field for their activity, and designed for it some of the most remarkable of its buildings. Latrobe, Mills, Strickland, Havi- land, and Walter all contributed much to the appearance of the growing city, and in the work of all, whether it was strictly Greek or not, the ideals of the new architectural movement were enshrined. It is not strange that this should have been the case. Philadelphia was, in the early years of the Republic, the undoubted metropolis of the country. It was, in its own characteristic staid way, the center of culture and of art. Boston was still, in architecture, largely under the sway of English late-Georgian inspiration, so beautifully re-created in New England in the domestic work of Bulfinch, the exquisite 121 122 TALBOT HAMLIN April interiors of Mclntire, and the early handbooks of Asher Benjamin. New York, struggling out of the devastation caused by the long British occupation, was still dominated by the transitional work of John McComb, Jr., the Mangins, and such architects as Josiah Brady and the young Martin Thompson; Greek forms were not to become popular there till the later 1820's.
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