Walking Philadelphia: Architectural History & Cultural Institutions

This course combines the idea of a walking seminar with course readings and historic research to investigate different scales of urban history in Philadelphia and the way that Philadelphia’s cultural institutions have created a feedback loop with the cultural and social life of the city. This class is designed with future preservationists in mind, but planners and architects are welcome. Walking tours will be methods for collecting specific questions about the built environment, including the history of building materials and construction, the role of the facade, the history and use of commercial versus residential, ordinary or vernacular versus high style design, and more. Philadelphia’s grid, squares, cultural boulevards, cemeteries, alleyways, and discrete neighborhoods will be explored. Visits to specific cultural institutions such as the Wagner Free Institute of Science, the Ethical Society of Philadelphia, the Mutter Museum, Eastern State Penitentiary and the Free Library, all which contain 19th and 20th century intellectual traditions, will help us interrogate how Philadelphia was shaped as ‘in and of the world.' The goal of the course is two part: learning to merge the intellectual and cultural history of Philadelphia with its urban history, and creating a handbook for reading the city's material history by asking—in part—what was chosen and why? What is lost? What is found? And finally, what is future?