Board of Education - Philadelphia, PA
N 39° 57.545 W 075° 10.476
18S E 485087 N 4423230
This old building is huge with incredible detail, much more than anything which would be built for our crumbling school district today. it is now being leased out as condos and apartments.
Waymark Code: WM7YWB
Location: Pennsylvania, United States
Date Posted: 12/25/2009
Views: 5
On the southwest corner of Winter and Twenty-first Streets is the Board of Education Building, which houses the administrative offices of Philadelphia's public school system and contains a comprehensive pedagogical library.
The building, a large gray limestone edifice, rises 11 stories in its central section. The lower stories, of italian Renaissance design with two-story wings, extend forward to flank a central court and reflecting pool. The court is enclosed on the four sides by a large wall rising to the height of the second story and pierced by five tall openings on the keystones of whose arches are large scrolls. Similar keystones lock the arches above the windows of the first floor. The upper stories of the building depart from the Italian Renaissance, having between the windows long columnettes terminating in carved busts of eminent men of letters.
--- Philadelphia: A Guide to the Nation's Birthplace , 1937; page 583
This building used to be the headquarters for our school district. The architecture is simply amazing, Classical Revival, it matches up nicely with all the other buildings within a 1 block radius. If you look around, there are nearly half a dozen other NRHP sites next to this one. There is the Free LIbrary, the Family Court building, Franklin Institute, two churches, and a host of other spots I had no time to investigate. There is a large inner courtyard which I thought was one of the nicer features of this building. The cornerstone reads 1930 and the building is still as breath taking and beautiful as the day it was built.
Incidentally, just to set the record straight, there are two notable mistakes in the NRHP listing as I am sure it has not been updated in quite some time. Its current function is actually commercial and used for residential housing. The second more obvious mistake is the address. The entrance is actually on Winter Street, between 21st and 22nd Streets and nowhere near 21st and the Parkway.
From a web page (source below found in secondary field):
"The original proposal called for a 356-foot/21-floor tower. This great height was denied given the building's proximity to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway." SOURCE