Monthly Archives: November 2011

The Parkway’s Tipping Point: a Millionaire, a Mayor and a Model

By Ken Finkel | Published: November 17, 2011
Imagine John Reyburn’s shock when he heard the massive Parkway project was headed—literally—in the wrong direction. Demolition of the first of 1,300 buildings had been underway for two months when Reyburn, Philadelphia’s brand new mayor in April 1907, learned that the swath being cut through the northwest quadrant of Center City was off course. Reyburn [...]
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Yo, Alice: We still have the one that got away. (It’s around here somewhere.)

By Ken Finkel | Published: November 10, 2011
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Broad and Cherry Streets, 1925. It’s not every day, or even every decade, that a major museum of American art opens for business. In big cities, it’s a once-or-twice-a-century kind of thing. This week, Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opens in Bentonville Arkansas “to celebrate [...]
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Cracking the Sculptural Code in City Hall Courtyard

By Ken Finkel | Published: November 3, 2011
City Hall Courtyard During Subway Construction, November 16, 1915, N. M. Rolston, Photographer. Smack dab in the center of Philadelphia is a building with scads of sculpture and one persistent mystery. Philadelphia City Hall is encrusted with no less than 250 marble figures, heads, allegories, principles and attributes by Alexander Milne Calder and his team. [...]
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