One South Broad
- Architect
- John T. Windrim
- Year
- 1932
- Style
- Art Deco
- City
- Philadelphia, PA
- Collection
- philly deco
One South Broad rose in 1932 as an Art Deco annex to Wanamaker's department store, designed by John Torrey Windrim to hold the store's Men's Shop on its first seven floors and rival the scale of Europe's grand department stores. The Philadelphia National Bank bought the 28-story, 472-foot tower in 1952 and converted it to offices and banking space, and it's still remembered by the initials PNB left on its bell tower for decades.
the building
Rodman Wanamaker's penthouse. The 24th and 25th floors originally held a luxurious penthouse built for Rodman Wanamaker, son of the department-store founder — private space at the top of a tower otherwise built to sell menswear and, later, bank services.
PNB's rooftop initials. From its 1952 conversion until 2014, the building's bell tower carried the Philadelphia National Bank's initials in stainless steel letters 16 feet tall on all four sides, a giant signature visible across Center City.
Gallery lobby to the Widener Building. A three-story gallery lobby links One South Broad directly to the neighboring Widener Building, stitching the tower into the older streetscape of the Broad Street financial corridor.
the style
Windrim designed One South Broad, also known as the Lincoln-Liberty Building, in the Art Deco idiom fashionable for commercial towers of 1932, suited to the vertical bell-tower crown that later carried PNB's giant initials.
More on Art Decosignificance
One South Broad carries no historic designation, but its afterlife tells its own story: department-store annex, then bank headquarters known as the PNB Building, then a 2000 conversion of its ground-floor banking hall into retail and restaurant space.
nearby
- Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia
- Philadelphia City Hall
- Land Title Building
- North American Building
- Wanamaker’s
- Church of The Epiphany