PHILADELPHIA'S RITTENHOUSE SQUARE From Swamp to Swank, An Illustrated Lecture by Robert Morris Skaler on Sunday, Sept. 21, at 2 p.m. at Abington Free Library, Community Room

PHILADELPHIA’S RITTENHOUSE SQUARE

From Swamp to Swank

An Illustrated Lecture by Robert Morris Skaler

Sunday, Sept. 21, at 2 p.m.
Abington Free Library, Community Room

Register for this free event at: the Library Office, Abington Free Library, 1030 Old York Road, Abington, Pennsylvania 19001, 215-885-5180, ext. 15, kburnham@mclinc.org, or online here.

Rittenhouse Square was the home of Philadelphia Society during America’s Gilded Age.

Established by William Penn in 1682 as the South-West Square and renamed in 1825, Rittenhouse Square and its environs changed from a swampy isolated district of brickyards and workers’ shanties into the city’s most elegant and prestigious neighborhood between 1845 and 1865.

The brownstone and marble mansions on the Square itself were inhabited by the city’s wealthiest and most prestigious families, with names like Weightman, Biddle, Cassatt, Drexel, Van Rensselaer, and Stotesbury.

As Philadelphia’s upper classes fled to the suburbs during the 20th century, their mansions were replaced by skyscrapers or taken over by cultural institutions like the Philadelphia Art Alliance and the Curtis Institute of Music.

While only a few original mansions remain on Rittenhouse Square today, it is still the center of a lively, upscale neighborhood and a prime example of an urban green space. Despite the many changes that have overtaken it, Rittenhouse Square remains just as Jane Jacobs described it in 1961: “A beloved, successful, much-used park, one of Philadelphia’s greatest assets”

... and it was recently named one of the top ten public places in North America.

Robert Morris Skaler is a forensic architect and historian, He is the author of West Philadelphia University City to 52nd St, Philadelphia’s Broad Street: South and North, and Society Hill and Old City for Arcadia Publishing. The book’s co-author, Thomas H. Keels, is a Philadelphia writer and historian who has authored Chestnut Hill, and Philadelphia Graveyards and Cemeteries for Arcadia and Forgotten Philadelphia.

A book signing by co-author Robert Skaler will follow the lecture.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in various library programs are solely those of the presenter and do not necessarily represent the views of the Abington Township Public Library or the Friends of Abington Township Public Library.

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