Society Hill Towers (ASIAN ARCHITECTS / DESIGNERS / ARTISTS OF PHILLY)

I.M. Pei's Society Hill Towers Frame Local Sites in Philadelphia's Oldest Neighborhood

By Steve Baron

This story is part of a series featuring Asian Architects / Designers / Artists of Philly. We will be highlighting incredible murals that are a part of Mural Arts Philadelphia, urban street art that is part of Philadelphia Museum of Art's collection or other collections, urban spaces that embody Asian culture, and buildings designed by some of the most renowned architects from around the world. We will be featuring short blog posts written by members of Urban Design Committee, as well as guest posts by Committee on the Environment, Environmental Justice subcommittee. Stay tuned for more!

The three 31-story Society Hill Towers, with their waffle iron-like concrete exterior, make a major mark on Philadelphia's skyline, and anchor Society Hill, once the hub of maritime trade, wholesale food distribution, and working-class immigrants, and now one of the country's best examples of a successful urban renewal project.

I.M. Pei, the Pritzker Prize-winning, Chinese-American architect, designed the towers and dozens of three-story Flemish bond brick townhouses with Webb & Knapp, the property management firm led by William Zeckendorf in New York, [1], the Aluminum Corporation of America (ALCOA), and the Covent America Corporation. [3] The Society Hill Towers were designed in 1957-1958 and completed in 1964, and replaced the aging Dock Street Market. The Towers are placed asymmetrically, with vistas aligning with streets and framing views of sites. [2]

Pei drew inspiration from the landscaped classical Chinese gardens of Suzhou, China. His ancestral family garden, “The Garden of the Lion Forest,” featured doors and windows that “framed” the “pictures” of nature that evoked large natural landscapes. “Pei planned the towers to 'frame' views of important sites in the area, such as Old Christ Church, the same way that traditional Chinese buildings frame views of gardens. He included trees, shrubs, and open grassy areas, in line with William Penn's original plan for Philadelphia to be a 'Greene Countrie Towne.'” [1]

The Towers are constructed with cast-in-place, load-bearing concrete, with floor-to-ceiling, aluminum-framed windows that are set deep into the concrete screen. A fountain in the middle and a lawn transition to the Modernist townhouses in the Society Hill Town Houses and Bingham Court, complementing the more than 300 historic 18th and 19th century townhouses that were restored by “Old Philadelphia patrician families.” [2, 3, 7]

Pei won numerous industry awards for the Society Hill Towers, including the 1965 AIA Honor Award. The Museum of Modern Art also included the towers in its 1965 architecture exhibition “Modern Architecture, USA.”

The wider Society Hill neighborhood, named after the Quaker business group the Free Society of Traders that once had offices here, was the centerpiece of city planner Ed Bacon's Washington Square East redevelopment project. Shaded pedestrian greenways connect Society Hill to Independence Hall, and link historic sites to houses of worship and landscaped gardens. [4]

The Washington Square East urban renewal project did successfully keep middle class families from fleeing to the suburbs. However, Society Hill's urban renewal came at a steep cost: displacing many low-income and minority renters, in what would now be called an early example of hyper-gentrification. Society Hill entered the 1960s as one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, and ended the 1960s as one of the city's wealthiest neighborhoods. [5, 6]

While in Society Hill, check out the public artwork: Leonard Baskin's “Society Hill Sculpture (Old Man, Young Man, Future)” by the fountain, Jill Sablosky's “I.M. Pei Sculpture Garden: A Tribute” by the North Tower, Gaston Lachaise's “Floating Figure” in the Society Hill Town Houses, Richard Lieberman's “Unity” in Bingham Court, and Emlen Etting's memorial to former Mayor Richardson Dilworth called “Phoenix Rising” on Dock Street. -Ends-

Photo Captions:

[1] File:Society Hill Towers PA1.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Works Cited

[1] “I.M. Pei and Society Hill: A 40th Anniversary Celebration.” Philadelphia, Society Hill Towers Owners Association, 2003.

[2] Wiseman, Carter. “I.M. Pei: A Profile in American Architecture.” New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990.

[3] Smith, Neil. “The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City.” London and New York, Routledge, 1996.

[4] Knowles, Scott Gabriel. “Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City.” Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

[5] Blumgart, Jake and Jim Saksa. “From slums to sleek towers: How Philly became cleaner, safer, and more unequal.” WHYY. 12 March 2018.

https://whyy.org/segments/slums-sleek-towers-philly-became-cleaner-safer-unequal/

[6] Saksa, Jim. “Four reasons why Philadelphia is gentrifying” WHYY. 14 September 2017.

https://whyy.org/articles/four-reasons-why-philadelphia-is-gentrifying/

[7] Preserving Society Hill. https://preservingsocietyhill.org/