Remembering Aaron Wunsch (1970-2024)

Aaron Wunsch, associate professor in the Department of Historic Preservation, passed away on September 20, 2024. A member of the faculty at Weitzman since 2008, he was a widely admired historian and preservationist who deepened our understanding of the American landscape and helped secure the future of many important Philadelphia sites.

The Weitzman School is collecting tributes from colleagues and students, past and present. If you'd like to add your voice, contact news@design.upenn.edu.

Read an obituary by Daniel Bluestone, Barbara Clark Smith, Oliver Wunsch, and Jillian Galle.

Read an obituary published by Hidden City Philadelphia.

Read an obituary published by The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Members of the Weitzman community are invited to a memorial service organized by the family on Saturday, November 2, at Arch Street Meeting House, 320 Arch Street, at 2:00pm. 
 

Fritz Steiner, Dean and Paley Professor, Weitzman School of Design

In his teaching, writing, and frequent collaborations with community groups, Aaron was a relentless and uncompromising champion for the forgotten or nearly forgotten. In Palazzos of Power, he and Joe Elliott explored America’s ambitions for infrastructure and helped us see anew the buildings and machines that made possible the country’s electrification. He was at work on another book, Cemetery City, to shed light on Bethel Burial Ground, the first African American-owned graveyard separate from a church, and eighteenth and nineteenth-century Philadelphia landscapes like Laurel Hill and the Woodlands. These sites were among the numerous nominations to the National Register of Historic Places and Historic American Building Survey (HABS) reports that he produced beginning in 2004. Aaron had a long history of working with African American congregations to record and preserve historic churches, like Trinity Lutheran in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood.

The Weitzman School’s mission is rooted in our commitment to advancing the public good, and Aaron embodied it. He considered himself more of a public historian than an academic historian, putting the interests of his community partners ahead of his own. In the process, he inspired not just his students but his colleagues.

Francesca Russello Ammon, Associate Professor of City & Regional Planning and Historic Preservation

Aaron Wunsch fervently believed that history matters. But he also knew that history does not act on its own. Rather, we must mobilize history to action—through research, analysis, interpretation, and presentation. Aaron put this commitment into practice nearly every day. As a historian’s historian, he no doubt did this because he truly loved this stuff. But he also delighted in making history meaningful for others. He used history to bring the landscape to life for his students, to advocate so that communities could retain their built heritage, and to energize all of us to appreciate the social and material world around us.

Preservationists sometimes speak of a building or neighborhood’s “character-defining features.” Aaron had many such features, but one of the most distinctive was his consummate collaboration. Few people have been more invested in bringing people together: in joint writing projects, co-instructed courses across a range of departments (including my own experience co-teaching our core Documentation course with Aaron over multiple years), and partnerships with congregations and other community members all around Philadelphia. On a more personal level, he always took the time to make connections among individual people. He knew that we could all get more good work done if we did it together. 

Aaron’s collaborations also extended to his students, with whom he often simultaneously served as both mentor and co-conspirator. Not infrequently, I would watch a student walk down our shared little Meyerson hallway and into his office with what seemed like a simple question—only to emerge a full hour later armed with new sources and ideas and the encouraging stimulation of having worked through a research challenge together with him. Aaron not only loved history, but he loved helping his students love and learn history as well. 

“He knew that we could all get more good work done if we did it together.”

Aaron made a multitude of contributions to the Department of Historic Preservation, but one of his greatest was in conceiving of a new concentration in the Public History of the Built Environment. Over time, collaborating with the many departmental colleagues he rallied to the cause, Aaron organized a curriculum, introduced a new foundational course, and advised individual student projects. A growing range of faculty, students, and alumni constitute the concentration today, but Public History at Penn was Aaron’s brainchild. Through its endurance—and in the long shadow of his own example—Aaron’s influence will long live on at Penn and beyond. 

I will remember Aaron in so many ways. He was an advocate who put his ideas into both words and action. He was a sounding board to whom I could turn for honest advice, often conveyed with biting humor. And he was a colleague and friend who cared and was cared about deeply. But above all, I’ll remember Aaron as a generous teacher. He gave so much, and for that we are all so grateful.
 

Charlette Caldwell (MSHP'16), Lecturer, Department of Historic Preservation, and Predoctoral Fellow; Doctoral Student and Provost Diversity Fellow, Columbia University

Aaron was a true preservationist. And when I say this, I’m talking of course about the preservation of heritage places, but Aaron also preserved and cultivated lasting and meaningful relationships. Something only a true scholar knows how to do so expertly and diplomatically.

He was my teacher, but he was also my friend. A good friend who saw something in me and many other students who he taught since arriving at Penn in 2008. I met Aaron when I arrived at Penn in 2014, and he has been my friend and mentor ever since. 

I’ll admit that my first impression of him wasn’t all too great: the weary-looking, absent-minded professor who would be seen carrying around books and leaving a trail of papers behind him. I thought he would marginalize me; I once had a professor from undergrad once gleefully tell me that I “wouldn’t do well” with thesis. Aaron never once did that to me. He was strict, but fair. He played to my strengths, but never allowed me to use my weaknesses as a crutch. He was the authority in class, but the students knew they could approach him. I aspire to be a formidable teacher like Aaron.

Aaron had a “tool” kit of important people to draw from. He had the incredible ability to see the exacting expertise of each individual he called on to work with. A good example of this is, RePoint Philadelphia, the political action committee he helped found and was the president of until his passing. RePoint, as part of Aaron’s legacy, is working to influence policy in Philadelphia to save our cultural heritage. We will keep working just as vigorously as Aaron did. 

Aaron believed in saving places, but he believed in the people who were part of those places. He embraced change but worked tirelessly to save the old. 

Aaron had his faults, but who doesn’t? He was always late. I remember someone telling me how he once missed a meeting he was hosting at his own house. He was a little rough around the edges, but who really isn’t? He kept a suit jacket in his office so he would look presentable at Penn after being out in the field.

It’s like when Mycroft Holmes told his cronies that he “hears of Sherlock everywhere”. That’s how I feel about Aaron’s legacy. I see Aaron in the communities he worked with, the people he knew and loved and cared for, the work being conducted at Penn and elsewhere; Aaron is everywhere. I see Aaron in his family, his wonderful wife and son, Jillian and Eli. I see him when I teach, and I see him when I do my research. I see Aaron among the beautiful friends I have become close with; friends I have made because of Aaron.

I hear of and see Aaron everywhere and that’s comforting. 
 

J.M. Duffin, Assistant University Archivist, University Archives and Records Center, Penn Libraries

I first met Aaron close to 20 years ago when he came to the University Archives in our Franklin Field days to do research.  I recall how he was fascinated by the massive 1861 Lake and Beers Map of the Vicinity of Philadelphia we had hanging on the wall of our reading room. We struck up a conversation about Philadelphia history, architecture, and cemeteries which we continued ever since. Aaron was very easy-going, engaging and ready to talk about his work and even ask questions of you and what you were doing. I knew from the first encounter with him that he was a top-notch scholar and incredible person.

In 2011, Aaron asked me to assist with teaching the deed research component of the Penn Preservation course on documentation. Seeing Aaron in the classroom was a real treat. He was an excellent teacher, managing to explain complex issues well with just enough left out to pull the students into the subject and think about it. He always had time for the students and help them out. He was also helpful to me in fine-tuning my presentations explaining the intricacies of deeds and land records in Philadelphia.

“Rather than say, ‘That's sad. What can you do?’ he sprung into action.”

Perhaps the best part of Aaron's teaching was his work living historic preservation, not just talking about theory and practice. He was always action-oriented, ready to jump in and find a solution to a problem or a band aid if that was all that could be done. One particular example I recall was when his documentation class was working on properties in Southwest Philadelphia. Some students were assigned the St. James Episcopal Church property on Woodland Avenue. He noticed the church's archives were in a room in the Samuel Sloan designed parish house with a leaky roof. Rather than say, “That's sad. What can you do?” he sprung into action, he asked me if I could help put the archives in safe condition. We met up on a Saturday and went to Office Depot to buy supplies and then headed to the church where a number of students met us. We quickly got the archives out of the wet boxes into dry watertight containers and better organized.

In a similar vein, a few years later Aaron saw another archive in danger of being lost in a building suffering from a bad roof and neglect—the records of Mount Vernon Cemetery. He sprung into action, got a team of people together and asked University Archivist, Mark Lloyd, if we could help out. Mark said “Yes” and a crew of us boxed up all the records and temporarily moved them to Laurel Cemetery just weeks before we had a massive rainstorm in Philadelphia. I often thought if it had not been for Aaron, most of those records would be gone by now.

Aaron was not only a friend of archives but also a friend of buildings. There were many instances where he always worked to help save buildings with whatever means it took, from writing an e-mail or op-ed to climbing a ladder with roof patch materials or saving a date stone of an African American church from the landfill.

“If it had not been for Aaron...” is a sentence I think a lot of people can complete from their own experiences with him.

Aaron cannot be replaced but his spirit lives on in of us in a greater appreciation of and motivation for action for good in the world.

Elizabeth Milroy, Lecturer, Department of Historic Preservation; Professor Emerita of Art & Art History, Wesleyan University; Professor Emerita of Art & Art History, Drexel University

I had the pleasure and the privilege of teaching with Aaron for the past two years—watching him in the classroom was sheer delight as he both challenged and encouraged students to ask questions, to think critically and to take no prisoners. Apart from his love for Jillian and Eli, Aaron's passion was motivating people to recognize and value our built heritage in all of its forms. No site, no structure, no place was inconsequential. Our co-teaching stints grew from many years of friendship—frequent meetings at Starbucks or the New Deck Tavern to share new discoveries or to commiserate about the challenges to preservation that plague Philadelphia, of all places. I will miss Aaron's quick mind, his dry wit and his dedication. Most of all, I mourn the loss of a good and true comrade.


John Pollack, Senior Curator, Research Services, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Aaron was and will remain an inspiration to all of us who love Philadelphia and want to see its history preserved—in all of its material forms. He was an advocate for the role of special collections in education, and he taught a number of memorable courses in the library, including the wonderful seminar on Paris and Philadelphia he designed with Andrea Goulet. He applied his instinct for preservation to books as well as buildings, making a number of donations of items he had "rescued" from abandonment on West Philadelphia streetcorners. His particular interest in Germantown brought new attention to that neighborhood. Perhaps above all, his ability to motivate students and colleagues to ask their own new, and often difficult, questions of the past that is everywhere around us will be a lasting legacy.