Portico Row

Architect: Thomas Ustick Walter
Style: Greek Revival
City: Philadelphia, PA

Portico Row is a set of sixteen rowhouses built between 1831 and 1832 in what is now Washington Square West, designed by Philadelphia architect Thomas Ustick Walter, who would later design the dome of the U.S. Capitol. Built in the typical Philadelphia rowhouse plan of front building, piazza, and back building, the brick houses were arranged as eight mirror-image pairs, each pair sharing a common entrance portico.

the building

Shared Ionic porticoes. Each of the eight mirror-image pairs of houses shares a single entrance portico carried on Ionic order columns, the detail that gives the row its name and its distinctive rhythm along the sidewalk.

the style

Portico Row was designed in the Greek Revival style, expressed through its paired Ionic-columned porticoes rather than any single dramatic facade, a restrained approach suited to a row of private houses rather than a public building.

the architect

Thomas Ustick Walter (1804-1887) designed Portico Row early in a career that would culminate in his role as architect of the dome and wings of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

significance

The houses were documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1975 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.

nearby

Wilson Eyre House 180 ft
J. Peter Lesley House 490 ft · Greek Revival
Pennsylvania Hospital 0.2 mi · 1751
William Strickland Row 0.2 mi · Greek Revival
Walnut Street Theatre 0.2 mi · Neoclassical · 1808
Church of St. Luke and The Epiphany (Philadelphia) 0.2 mi · Greek Revival · 1840

All 127 buildings in Philadelphia