"The tradition of architectural excellence is enormous in Philadelphia," says Rafael Viñoly, architect of the city’s newest landmark, The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. Here are outstanding examples of every important style and period, from works by the Colonial-era, carpenter-architects, to modern masterpieces by Howe and Lescaze, Louis I. Kahn and—now—Viñoly.

This tradition began in 1682, when William Penn and other members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) established the city just above the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. Penn himself laid out Philadelphia with surveyor Thomas Holme, creating one of the earliest and clearest urban plans in the Americas.

The area known as Center City still conforms to the plan. It is a grid bounded by Vine Street on the north, South Street on the south, Front Street on the east (along the Delaware) and 24th Street on the west (the Schuylkill). Two thoroughfares—east-west Market Street and north-south Broad Street—intersect in the middle, dividing Center City into quadrants.

Penn designated the intersection of Broad and Market Streets, which was first known as Center Square, as the place for civic buildings. (Since the end of the 19th century, it has been occupied by City Hall.) Penn and Holme also set aside a green space within each quadrant—Rittenhouse, Washington, Franklin and Logan squares—at equal distances from the center.

The city’s oldest structures are located in the eastern portions of Center City known as Old City and Society Hill. Here are the greatest number of authentic 18th century buildings in the country, as well as some of the most historically significant sites in the United States.

Among the notable residential buildings in these sections are the modest row houses in brick, dating from 1720, in Elfreth’s Alley, the oldest continually inhabited street in the country; the Betsy Ross House (1740); the three-story Powel House (1765), subdued on the exterior, but luxurious within and considered to be the finest Georgian row house in Philadelphia; and the finely crafted Hill-Physick-Keith House (1786), one of the city’s free-standing mansions from the Federal period. Also in this area is Franklin Court, the site where Benjamin Franklin built his house and print shop. Although the original 18th century structures have been destroyed, the National Park Service has converted the site into an interpretive complex, with an innovative design by Venturi and Rauch with John Milner Associates (1973-76).

Religious buildings in this area include Christ Church (1727-44), a Georgian design modeled by John Kearsley on Sir Christopher Wren’s architecture; St. Peter’s Church (1758-61), a restrained example of the Palladian style, designed and built by the carpenter-architect Robert Smith; and the Arch Street Friends Meeting House (Owen Biddle, 1803/05 and 1810/11), a plain, two-story brick structure with wood shutters and columned porticos over the doors, conveying the quiet dignity and simplicity that were primary values in the Philadelphia of this era.

The eastern portion of Center City also includes Independence Hall (first known as the State House), site of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Built in 1732-48 by Alexander Hamilton with Edmund Wooley, the building is an outstanding example of Georgian design. The nearby Carpenters’ Hall (Robert Smith, 1770-74), a guild hall built on Palladian models with Georgian details, was used by the Continental Congress in 1774. Other public buildings in this area include the First Bank of the United States (1795-97), designed by Samuel Blodgett and James Windrim; the Second Bank of the United States (William Strickland, 1818-24), one of the first Greek Revival public buildings in the country, modeled on the Parthenon; and the Merchants’ Exchange (Strickland, 1832-33), the oldest stock exchange in the country, built in a later, more sumptuous version of the Greek Revival style.

Much of the city’s outstanding stock of 19th century structures is found in the Rittenhouse Square area, on the southwest side of Center City. Residences include the row houses along Locust Street and Delancey Place in Italian Renaissance Revival, Georgian Revival and Beaux-Arts styles; fine Victorian houses by Wilson Eyre from the late 19th century; and the Thomas Hockley House (1875/94), a distinctively virtuosic brick mansion by Philadelphia’s boldest native architect, Frank Furness. Rittenhouse Square also contains the Gothic Revival St. Mark’s Church (1848-51) by John Notman; the Church of the Holy Trinity by Notman (1856-59), one of America’s first accurate buildings in the Romanesque style; and the Second Presbyterian Church (1869-72) by Henry Sims, with a tower and chapel added by Furness in 1900.

In the heart of Center City, where Market Street and Broad Street intersect, is City Hall (1871-1901), designed by John McArthur, Jr., with Thomas U. Walter. It is a building of superlatives: the largest municipal building in the United States and the country’s finest example of Second Empire style, whose 548-foot tower (the world’s tallest masonry structure without a steel frame) is topped by the largest single piece of sculpture on any building—Alexander Milne Calder’s 27-ton cast-iron statue of William Penn. Calder created the rest of the building’s sculpture as well, decorating both the exterior and the lavish public spaces inside. Monumental arched portals on each side of the building open into a central public courtyard, giving the impression that City Hall is not merely open to the public but is penetrated by the two main thoroughfares.

To the south of City Hall, on the section of Broad Street that has been developed as the Avenue of the Arts, stands the Academy of Music (1855-57), for many years the home of The Philadelphia Orchestra. Designed as an opera house by Napoleon LeBrun and Gustave Runge, the Academy was modeled after La Scala and given a rich neo-Baroque interior, with huge Corinthian columns marking the proscenium.

To the north of City Hall on Broad Street stands the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1872-76), the masterpiece of Frank Furness. Outside, the building is an astounding fusion of historical styles—Venetian, English and French—in red brick, rusticated brownstone, dressed sandstone and polished pink granite, ornamented with purplish terra-cotta. Inside, the low foyer opens into a grand staircase hall that vibrates with rich color, its walls of deep red, incised with gold floral patterns, glowing beneath a blue ceiling sprinkled with silver stars.

A number of significant buildings from the turn of the 20th century stand near City Hall. These include the Land Title Building (Daniel H. Burnham, 1897), a sixteen-story skyscraper that is the earliest East-coast example of the Chicago style; the John Wanamaker Department Store (Burnham with John T. Windrim, 1902-11), with its spectacular five-floor central court; and the Girard Trust Company (1905-08) by McKim, Mead and White, a strong example of the neoclassical style that the firm promulgated across America.

The Reading Terminal building (The Wilson Brothers with Frank Kimball, 1891-93), with its wrought- and cast-iron columns and Italian Renaissance arches, features the only surviving single-span arched train shed in the United States. In 1993-94, the shed was incorporated into the new Pennsylvania Convention Center as a grand hall and ballroom. The building continues to house a farmers’ market instituted in the 19th century, now known as the Reading Terminal Market.

One of the greatest examples of Beaux-Arts urban design in the United States is the Benjamin Franklin Parkway (1917), which cuts diagonally from the vicinity of City Hall toward the northwest. Designed by landscape architect Jacques Greber and modeled after the Champs Elysées, the Parkway is flanked by two buildings where it passes through Logan Circle: the Free Library (1917-27, Horace Trumbauer) and the Franklin Institute (1930, John T. Windrim). At the Parkway’s terminus stands the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1916-28), which takes the form of three interconnected temples, reached by a monumental flight of stairs. The scheme for the museum was proposed by the chief designer of Horace Trumbauer’s firm, Julian Abele, the first African-American graduate of the University of Pennsylvania architecture school. His design was adapted by the project’s other architects, C. Clark Zantzinger and Charles L. Borie, Jr.

Philadelphia’s signal contributions to modern architecture began with the PSFS Building (Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, 1930-32), designed by George Howe and William Lescaze. Located only steps away from City Hall, Wanamaker’s department store and the Reading Terminal, this was the first International Style skyscraper in the United States. Now in use as the Loews Hotel, it remains one of the most sophisticated and luxurious works of Modernist architecture in the world.

Another key building in the history of 20th century architecture stands across the Schuylkill River from the Center City: the Richards Medical Research Laboratory (1957-61) by Louis I. Kahn. In this project, made in precast and poured-in-place concrete, Kahn produced the first full realization of his concept of dividing a building into served and servant spaces, with each being given its own form and expression.

Just north of Center City stands another epoch-making building, one that announced a break with Modernist principles: Guild House (1960-63) by Venturi and Rauch, with Cope and Lippincott. Flamboyantly plain and elegantly awkward, this brick apartment building for the low-income elderly demonstrated Robert Venturi’s faith in the strength of both classical models and vernacular "architecture without architects."

Back in the City Hall area is a post-modern landmark by Murphy/Jahn, One Liberty Place (1987). At 960 feet, this skyscraper of glass, aluminum and granite is the tallest building in the city, and the one that broke the unstated rule that nothing in Philadelphia should rise higher than the statue of William Penn atop City Hall. With its many-gabled top sheathed in blue glass, One Liberty Place satisfied a quasi-nostalgic desire for iconic silhouettes (such as that of the Chrysler Building), yet at the same time boldly proclaimed a new era in building for Philadelphia.

"How do you respond to the challenge of building in Philadelphia?" asks Rafael Viñoly in discussing his own addition to this tradition, The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. "You have to make a landmark for a city of monuments, and at the same time you want to invite interaction."

With the great arch of its barrel-vault roof, The Kimmel Center recalls other elements of Center City Philadelphia, such as the arches of the Reading Terminal. By its transparency, the arch also helps bring The Kimmel Center down to the scale of an adjacent structure, the Frank Furness building of the University of the Arts. But, most important, the barrel-vaulted roof encloses the two major venues of The Kimmel Center—Verizon Hall and the Perelman Theater—to create a large indoor plaza, which merges disparate programs in a single space. "It is a space with no title," Viñoly states. "You can’t say, ‘This is the lobby,’ or ‘This is the box office,’ or ‘This is the approach to the café.’

"That’s what The Kimmel Center does, in a city where the tradition of space-making has previously been about the articulation of sequences. I’d like to think this possibility for openness and unpredictability was what made the project uplifting for the people in Philadelphia. When we made the public presentation, people embraced the idea. That’s something that can’t be faked, something that gives you the feeling you’re hitting it right at some level."

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