P.S.F.S.: Philadelphia's Super Fantastic Skyscraper

Ok, so that is not what P.S.F.S. really stands for, but it is true that the P.S.F.S. Building in Philadelphia is one of my favorite skyscrapers--P.S.F.S. in its case standing for "Philadelphia Savings Fund Society." The 33 story building, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze, was completed in 1932, only a year after the completion of the Empire State Building in New York City. And while the two are really contemporaries, the Empire State Building is considered to be an Art Deco skyscraper while the P.S.F.S Building is considered to be the first International Style skyscraper.

The International Style was defined in great part by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock in their 1931 book The International Style. The book was published in conjunction with an exhibit of the same name on Modern Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. In the book, they expound upon three main principles of Modern Architecture in the International Style:

(1) Architecture as volume rather than mass: "the prime architectural symbol is no longer the dense brick but the open box";

(2) Regularity, but not necessarily symmetry: "good modern architecture expresses in its design [the] characteristic orderliness of structure and [a] similarity of parts by an aesthetic ordering which emphasizes the underlying [structural] regularity"; and

(3) The avoidance of applied decoration: "architectural detail, which is required as much by modern structure as by the structures of the past, provides the decoration of contemporary architecture."

For many years an office building, the P.S.F.S. building has been opened to the public since 2000 when it was renovated to be the Loews Philadelphia Hotel. The hotel is very nice and I would highly recommend it if you ever plan on staying in Philadelphia. Ask for a high floor on the north or west sides for the best views of Center City! Kim and I have enjoyed staying there twice: the first time for our 5th wedding anniversary in May of 2007 and the second this past Independence Day when we visited Philadelphia with our friend Sujeong.

Though the hotel rooms are quite nice, some of the best architectural features of the building are found in its restored public spaces, including the main lobby and a 33rd floor conference floor (former board-rooms, I imagine), which has a great view of Center City, including City Hall. Since it was rainy when we were in Philadelphia this past Independence Day, we decided to watch the fireworks on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway from the top of the P.S.F.S.! It was really cool seeing a fireworks display from a skyscraper, although we did unfortunately miss out on the enjoyment of the musical soundtrack.

Even though some of the interiors do feel a little more Deco than Modern, the materials Howe & Lescaze use--both inside and out--are pretty amazing: beautiful granites and marbles in the elevator lobbies, smooth limestone piers along the exterior of the tower which emphasize the tower's height, black glazed brick cladding on the offset elevator core, and beautiful hardwood wall paneling on the conference level. But don't worry! Just when you start thinking that these opulent materials should not really have anything to do with Modernism or the International Style, Johnson and Hitchcock assure us that "the character of surface of volume is not expressed merely by the general design of a modern building [and] the actual materials of the surface itself are of the utmost importance."

PS update: In the photo above, I love the way the strip of windows turns the corner on the black-glazed-brick-clad "core." As if Howe & Lescaze are emphasizing that the brick, usually a load-bearing building material, is simply used as a skin in this case--which it is. If it were load-bearing, it would have had to be continuously vertical at the corners, and the ribbon of windows could not have appeared as it does. It is a cool (dare I say typical) Modern detail!