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File:MAIN STAIR HALL, LOOKING WEST FROM THIRD FLOOR - Free Library of Philadelphia, Central Library, 1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, PA HABS PA-6749-21.tif

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MAIN STAIR HALL, LOOKING WEST FROM THIRD FLOOR - Free Library of Philadelphia, Central Library, 1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, PA
Photographer
Elliott, Joseph, creator
Title
MAIN STAIR HALL, LOOKING WEST FROM THIRD FLOOR - Free Library of Philadelphia, Central Library, 1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, PA
Description
Trumbauer, Horace, architect; Abele, Julian, architect; Carnegie, Andrew, financier; Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, sponsor
Depicted place Pennsylvania; Philadelphia County; Philadelphia
Date 2008
Dimensions 4 x 5 in.
Current location
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
Accession number
HABS PA-6749-21
Credit line
This file comes from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) or Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). These are programs of the National Park Service established for the purpose of documenting historic places. Records consist of measured drawings, archival photographs, and written reports.

This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing.

Notes
  • Significance: The Central Library, built between 1917 and 1927, was designed by well-known architect Horace Trumbauer and his associate Julian Abele and it is the flagship of the Philadelphia Free Library system. Favoring French architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they based their design on the twin Ministere de la Marine and Hotel de Crillon on Place de la Concorde in Paris. The library was the first structure to be erected along the city's new parkway, which was likewise inspired by Parisian precedents, namely the Champs d'Elysee. It too was the work of Horace Trumbauer, with architects Paul Cret, Clarence Zantzinger, and French planner Jacques Greber. Intended as a grand boulevard linking City Hall to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Fairmount Park, it was later named for Benjamin Franklin. The parkway and the civic structures and monuments that line it were a product of Philadelphia's City Beautiful movement.

Philadelphia was the recipient of one of the largest of industrialist-turned- philanthropist Andrew Carnegie's grants for library construction. Although the Central Library was not a component of the endowment, Carnegie financed the construction of its twenty-five branch libraries, erected between 1905 and 1930 under the direction of the city's Carnegie Fund Committee. The branch libraries remain as a remarkable intact and cohesive grouping rivaled only by that of New York City with its sixty-seven branches. The construction of the Central Library furnished a long-anticipated permanent home for the Free Library, an institution that was chartered in 1891 and previously housed in a number of pre-existing structures. When completed, Philadelphia's Central Library was touted as one of the most beautiful and technologically sophisticated libraries in the world, and its capacity of more than one million volumes was exceeded only by that of the British Museum, the New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress.

  • Survey number: HABS PA-6749
  • Building/structure dates: after. 1916- before. 1928 Initial Construction
Source https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/pa4067.photos.573851p
Permission
(Reusing this file)
Public domain This image or media file contains material based on a work of a National Park Service employee, created as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, such work is in the public domain in the United States. See the NPS website and NPS copyright policy for more information.

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current09:00, 1 August 2014Thumbnail for version as of 09:00, 1 August 20144,021 × 5,052, 2 pages (38.77 MB)Fæ (talk | contribs)GWToolset: Creating mediafile for Fæ. HABS 31 July 2014 (3000:3200)

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