Old Federal Reserve Bank
- Architect
- Paul Philippe Cret
- Style
- Neoclassical
- City
- Philadelphia, PA
The Old Federal Reserve Bank Building at 925 Chestnut Street was designed by Paul Philippe Cret in a Classical Revival style with Beaux-Arts influences, built between 1931 and 1935. It absorbed the earlier 1889 Penn Mutual Life Insurance Building on the site, with 1918 and 1925 additions folded into Cret's design; he also laid out the building's formal gardens in 1941. Harbeson, Hough, Livingston & Larson, Cret's successor firm, added a recessed seventh story in 1952-53.
the building
Athena at the entrance. Sculptures of the goddess Athena, carved by Alfred-Alphonse Bottiau, decorate the eleven-bay facade -- 170 feet wide and 113 feet deep, faced in Vermont marble over a steel frame with engaged piers.
the style
Cret worked in a Classical Revival idiom colored by Beaux-Arts training, using Vermont marble and Athena figures to give a bank building the gravity of a temple to sound money.
More on Neoclassicalsignificance
Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and located within the East Center City Commercial Historic District.
nearby
- New York Mutual Life Insurance Company Building
- St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, Philadelphia
- Robert N.C. Nix, Sr. Federal Building
- Robinson Department Store
- Randolph Theatre
- Walnut Street Theatre