Monthly Archives: September 2012

Why We Love Frank Furness

By Ken Finkel | Published: September 18, 2012
We didn’t always. Love Frank Furness, that is. “The man came out of the [Civil War] a swearing, swaggering, bewhiskered figure of martial bearing, a bulldog personality ready to challenge the architectural status quo,” James O’Gorman tells us in a review of Michael Lewis’ book, Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind. “He organized his [...]
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Landmark or Not: The Musical Fund Hall is a Site of Conscience

By Ken Finkel | Published: September 11, 2012
Philadelphia’s got a raft of National Historic Landmarks, the crème de la crème of historic sites. The list is long here: 65 in all, from Independence Hall to Eastern State Penitentiary to the John Coltrane House. And it would have been longer had the National Park Service let stand their original, 1974 ruling in favor [...]
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Frankford’s Fate in Post-Industrial Philadelphia

By Ken Finkel | Published: September 4, 2012
Once upon a time it didn’t matter that the Frankford Creek flooded. But that was before people lived and worked in Frankford Creek’s flood plain. Then Frankford got its mills and its mill workers, thousands of them. Overwhelmingly, these were textile mills built during the 19th century with immigrant know-how and operated by immigrant labor. Frankforders [...]
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