Also this issue: Tree-mendous Assets Chopping down street foliage paves the way for blight. -Joanne Aitken

March 20-26, 2003

cityspace

Diamonds Are Forever

by Daniel Brook

An exhibition of photographs and architectural drawings titled "Acres of Diamonds: The Architectural Treasures of North Philadelphia," will be on view from March 24 through April 4 in Meyerson Hall at the University of Pennsylvania. The exhibit is a project of the Historic American Building Survey (HABS), a 70-year-old federal historic preservation agency that documents the nation’s architectural gems on paper and film. Photographer Joseph Elliott, an art professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, took the photographs on view; HABS architects made the architectural sketches and floor plans.

Featured buildings include the Wagner Free Institute of Science, the French Gothic-style Church of the Advocate, and the Divine Lorraine Hotel, which now sits vacant at Broad and Fairmount.

For the past decade, Elliott has taken photographs of the Philadelphia area for HABS. The photographer says he strives to capture the amount of detail on the Victorian-era buildings. "Because of the cost of labor, you might say, the number of people who could be employed or the time they could put into it can’t be matched in modern architecture," Elliott explains. But beyond simply creating "a record of the four sides of a building, or just the significant details," Elliott says he hopes to allow "the viewer to feel that they’re experiencing it as I would."

Joanne Jackson, who heads the Advocate Community Development Corporation (ACDC), says the purpose of the exhibition is to "make people aware of the extent and the richness of Victorian buildings in North Philadelphia." ACDC is committed to rehabilitating historic buildings in the area and creating an "economically integrated" neighborhood. "We’re doing a lot of real estate development and we want people to come and live here," Jackson says. Without stimulating demand for historic properties in the area, more will face the fate of the Widener mansion, which once stood at Broad and Girard. A Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant now stands in its place. (Both buildings are featured in the exhibit.)

A lecture featuring speakers from HABS and ACDC will be followed by a reception on Thu., March 27. Both are free and open to the public and begin at 6 p.m.