The Art and Caricature of Frank Furness

Although Frank Furness is a household name to most Philadelphians, one of the most creative architects of the Victorian Era may also be one of the most underappreciated. Only vaguely adhering to the rigorous design requirements of his time, his deserved recognition is often lost in the history books, often with only a brief mention.

Like most architects of the latter half of the 19th Century, Frank Furness designed more than just his buildings. He pared his work with furniture, crafted woodwork and masonry specific to his buildings and clients.

To the post-war era public, the previous art and architecture movements were a garish homage to the excessive decadence that led to the Great Depression.

Urban planners spent the 1950s razing countless Victorian examples, and Frank Furness's projects took a particularly harsh hit.

Over a century later, Furness and others are finally getting the recognition they never received, even in their lifetimes. A recent wave of renewed interest has provided a place for rogue architects like Frank Furness, Willis Hale, William Decker, and others lost to the academic definition of their time.

The Barra Foundation is currently sponsoring an exhibition on Frank Furness at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, Face & Form: The Art and Caricature of Frank Furness. The exhibition, which runs until January 11th, showcases Furness's talent as more than an architect, but also an artist. The architect's sketchbooks, preserved by his ancestors, are on display for the first time ever.

Risky Design Business

While critics encourage better design and community activists lobby for responsible development, many times the compromises yield bland results or stagnant progress. In a culture once ruled by the commercial media, an explosion of personal technologies has given everyone an immediate voice.

Blogs rival traditional news sources with opinionated diatribes. Activists protest multiple causes from their iPhones. The audience is overstimulated with what ultimately amounts to little more than white noise. These technologies aren't bad, we just haven't learned how to deal with them yet.

Operating under antiquated expectations (and by antiquated, I mean the world before the web), City Council receives arguments presented by critics and activists as if they were an angry mob standing outside City Hall in 1980.

The rules of campaigning tell politicians that these loud voices are all potential votes, but these rules haven't compensated for the white noise and the internet mayhem. Essentially, politicians haven't figured out that most of today's vocal opposition isn't as dedicated as the picketers in the last century.

One day they're protesting billboards on Market East, the next they're blogging against horse-drawn carriages in Society Hill, and the next week they're at a Prop 8 rally in California. We have it so good we'll protest anything, and our elected officials need to know how to weed out the legitimate constituents from the hot air.

Willis Hale's macabre Lorraine Hotel, known now as the Divine Lorraine, has captured the imagination of each passerby for a century.

Unfortunately, in a city once known for its exciting, experimental architecture, City Hall's inability to deal with public opinion has left us with a lot of vacant lots and boring buildings. 10 Rittenhouse, Symphony House, and even the Comcast Tower don't come close to living up to the reputation handed down to us by Willis Hale and Frank Furness.

Frank Furness challenged conventional Victorian style with exaggerated elements and colors. Shown here is the National Bank of the Republic on Chestnut Street.

William Lescaze and George Howe challenged convention and the city's skyline with the PSFS Building, the world's first skyscraper built in the International Style. Even the mid-century additions of I.M. Pei's Society Hill Towers, Ed Bacon's Dilworth Plaza, and the State Office Building on North Broad Street employed a high standard of quality in their designs that were both strong and risky.

At a time when Philadelphia's skyline was dominated by City Hall and church steeples and New York's by Art Deco spires, the PSFS Building changed the face of urban American cities.

Built in a time when professionals knew their place and a community was respectful of their vision, architects were allowed to wow us, and occasionally disturb us. But like a bad haircut, it grows back or you get used to it.

In what would seem like a complete disregard for the quaint Colonialism of Society Hill, I.M. Pei's towers gently compliment the surrounding brick row homes and parks. The towers were part of a massive, mid-century plan that turned the worst slums in Center City into some of the regions most desirable addresses.

Instead of bending over for every action group with a website or assuming every critic is a professional at architecture and history, city planners and private developers need to know where to draw a line when it comes to the influence of public opinion. Given the attention span of most of the opposition, in the end it rarely matters.

Focus groups lead to boring, formulaic television programs, and the same goes for art and design. Renderings are shopped around the newspapers, blogosphere, and community meetings, shuffled through several self-proclaimed "expert" organizations, and sent back to the drawing board to be stripped of all character.

While our voices are often important, we don't know better than the professionals. Sometimes those with a vision need to stand their ground and shock us.

Hale's Legacy

Willis Hale's legacy in Philadelphia is often as macabre as his architecture. With the eerie Divine Lorraine, once home to the International Peace Movement Mission and Father Divine's followers, vacantly awaiting a new owner after being stripped of it's soul and left behind by an absent European investor, and the Keystone Bank Building's upper floors of the former Drucker's Bellevue Health Baths on Chestnut and Juniper quickly decaying above the retro-fitted Value Plus facade.

Unfortunately most of Hale's neo-Gothic Victorian examples were razed in the mid-century quest to return Philadelphia to its Colonial roots. These two in particular, arguably his most well known works, share a distinctly Halian identity.

Developer Alon Barzilay and architects JKR Partners have been in a debate with the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia on a rendering of what will be the latest of six interpretations of it's lower facade in the building's 123 year history. While Barzilay intends to fully restore the existing, historic masonry, the PAGP is concerned with JKR's interpretation of the 1960's addition. I just hope the roof survives the PAGP's stubbornness.

The numerous facades of the Keystone Bank Building - also known as the Lucas Building and the Hale Building - throughout its 123 year history. Seen here in 1893, 1900, 1930, 1955, 1970, Today, and JKR's rendering.

Everything and nothing is historic about the facade. It would only be fitting for its latest incarnation to be specifically dated to modern, 21st century architecture. Unless Barzilay plans to alter the remaining original details, any historical organization has no business dictating design. The PAGP can and should be offering suggestions, but it is not their place to halt progress based on the replacement of an insignificant facade. Their area of expertise is in existing, historical structures, not design, and they seem to have successfully hijacked an absolute authority over this building that they have no business exercising.