Exploring Philadelphia Suburban Homes (circa 1889)
presented by Jeffrey A. Cohen
In the late 1880s, two serial entrepreneurs took on the unexpected project of making a visual record of Philadelphia’s suburban homes. In the abstract that would be no small task, the pair, Joseph Lewis Wells and John Ferguson Hope, commissioned large photographs of houses of individualized and venturesome design, most of them from the city’s most prominent architects within the previous decade.
Their project would ultimately take in over 150 houses sitting on multi-acre lots spread out among Philadelphia’s suburban peripheries. Their owners shared not only substantial means, having commissioned (or later acquired) these bespoke houses, but also in having agreed to present themselves through house portraits, likely receiving a set of them issued in large green portfolios, perhaps for display on a parlor table. They admitted their owners into a kind of kinship, a virtual club.
Together we’ll explore this vivid gallery of ambitious Victorian designs by the city’s leading architects -- entrusted with generous budgets, ample sites, and a mandate to create something distinctive. Architects may have never enjoyed so much design freedom before or since. The images reflect an animated design conversation, offering an implicit chronicle of the trajectories of families and fortunes in space and time, and providing a moment’s very particular lens on an evolving built suburban landscape (one that has since been largely transformed by more recent development).
Born in Boston, Jeff Cohen came to Philadelphia for a four-year stay and never quite returned. He wrote his dissertation at Penn on Queen Anne and the Late Victorian townhouses, and he has been teaching since mid-the 1990s in the Growth and Structure of Cities Department at Bryn Mawr College. His interests and publications have focused on architects Benjamin Latrobe, Frank Furness, Wilson Eyre, and George T. Pearson, on early architectural drawings,19th-century surveyors’ plans, and more recently on long ‘panoramic’ downtown street-views.
This presentation is part of the Preservation Alliance's Fall Speaker Series, Preserving Philadelphia, and will be in-person, hosted by the Cosmopolitan Club on 1616 Latimer Street, Philadelphia PA 19103. Refreshments will be served.
Seating is limited. Pre-registration is required.
Have questions about building accessibility or the program? Email us at tours@preservationalliance.com