#psfs

Completed in 1932, the PSFS building at 12th and Market Streets in Philadelphia was the first American skyscraper constructed in the sleek, utilitarian International Style.

At the time, most skyscrapers, including the Empire State Building, had rectangular windows that punched through heavy brick and stone walls. But Howe and Lescaze's plan called for a sleek and streamlined 27-story building in which identical glass-walled floors of office space would wrap around a steel skeleton.

The PSFS Building also marked a break with tradition for its architects, Philadelphians George Howe and William Lescaze. Howe, a partner in the firm of Mellor, Meigs and Howe, was trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition and up until this point had worked firmly in its neoclassical style. In 1929, he left the partnership, bored with the buildings he had been designing, and teamed with Lescaze, a Swiss-born Modernist architect. From this marriage of architects and client, both seeking to strike out in new directions, came the most influential American skyscraper of the 20th century. The building was revolutionary in every respect while following Louis Sullivan's dictum, "Form follows function," to a T - literally. Atop the building's four-story base, which housed shops on the street floor and the main banking hall and offices above, sat a T-shaped office tower rising another 31 stories. The T shape maximized the space available in the office wing by housing all mechanical and service functions in the cross of the T. The office wing in the T's base in turn emphasized its verticality through the use of light-colored pillars projecting from the exterior wall and maximized light with large horizontal bands of windows that projected beyond the pillars via a cantilevered extension.

The building drew both high praise and sharp criticism on its opening in 1932. Many traditionalists slammed it as ugly and uninspired, and celebrated American architect Frank Lloyd Wright slammed its design as "neither international nor a style." Philadelphia Saving Fund Society President James M. Wilcox had to be persuaded on the merits of what has come to be its signature element: the large neon sign atop the building that bears the bank's initials. Even that sign serves a practical purpose, as it hides mechanical equipment on the roof.

The PSFS building was the second air conditioned (and tallest with a/c) office building in the United States. Upon opening in 1932, the building could boast many new technological advances including aluminum ribbon windows, thermostatically controlled heat, radio outlets in every office, acoustic ceiling tile carried on metal frames, high-speed elevators, and more.  The  overall plan of PSFS was revolutionary not only in its forward thinking approach to its functionality but also in its mechanical systems and equipment.

http://www.philadelphiaspeaks.com/threads/loews-teases-big-changes-at-the-psfs-building.38806/

http://www.designlinesltd.com/a-closer-look-a-walking-tour-of-philadelphia/design-lines-blog-psfs-building-philadelphia-skyscraper-the-first-modernist-international-styel/

http://www.docomomo-us.org/register/fiche/loews_philadelphia_hotel

http://www.phillylovenotes.com/psfs-center-city-bradley-maule/

http://philly.curbed.com/2016/5/19/11702488/psfs-building-historic-photos

Do you feel blue?

4:40pm Vibes

Today’s selection from the Hagley Library captures the corner of 12th and Filbert Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 19th, 1931. The buildings seen here were being prepared for demolition to make way for construction of a parking garage for the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society‘s new PSFS Building at 1200 Market Street.

The PSFS building, designed by architect George A. Fuller (1851-1900) and built by the Philadelphia firm of Howe and Lescaze, was the first skyscraper built in the International Style in the United States. The design was an immediate source of controversy; it was refused for consideration in the 1932 Architectural League of New York annual exhibition.

The signage at the left hand side of the photograph is advertising a sea food restaurant. The ‘Tannhauser’ on the sign is likely referencing Tannhauser Export, a regional beer brewed by the Philadelphia brewery of Bergner & Engel. The brewery, which at one point was one of the largest brewers in the country, was founded in 1870 by Charles Engel and Gustavus Bergner and was located in the Brewerytown neighborhood at 32nd & Thompson Streets. The brewery was forced to close shortly before this photograph was taken; a January 13, 1929 announcement in the Philadelphia Inquirer announced a liquidation sale of the brewers’ assets as a result of Prohibition. Today, the remnants of the Bergner & Engel brewery can be found in a surviving two-story storage building, now in use at Jefferson and 31st Streets as a stable for Fairmount Park. Other portions still remaining of the brewery can be found in repurposed or abandoned buildings to the west between 31st, 32nd, Master, and Jefferson Streets. The Philadelphia Savings Fund Society is also a remnant of the past, having rebranded itself as PSFS, then Mellon Bank, before its dissolution in 1992. Today, the building serves as a Loews Hotel. The corner here where the Tannhauser sign once stood has also changed significantly since the PSFS garage was constructed; visitors and residents of the city would recognize it best as the corners facing the western middle entryway of Reading Terminal Market.