| Bringing Historical University City Landscape Back to Life |
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September 29, 2009,
Volume 56, No. 05
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The Arthur Ross Gallery has arranged for author Robert Morris Skaler to give a talk this evening at the Penn Bookstore on his book, West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University City to 52nd Street, during the Gallery’s current exhibition, West Philadelphia, Building a Community.
The discussion and signing will be held on the Bookstore’s second floor at 6 p.m.
West Philadelphia: University City to 52nd Street is the first photographic history of the area in the past 100 years. Mr. Skaler presents rare images of the typical, modest West Philadelphia row houses that tell the story of how Philadelphia became known as the “City of Homes.”
Mr. Skaler is a forensic architect and historian, collecting historical images of West Philadelphia for more than 35 years. He graduated from Penn’s School of Fine Arts with a bachelor of architecture in 1959. He is a former president of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Victorian Society in America.
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Above, the University of Pennsylvania’s Library, built in 1890, Furness, Evans & Co. architect, circa 1900 from the Philadelphia Postal Card Co.; now known as the Anne and Jerome Fisher Fine Arts Library. Image courtesy of the University Archives Digital Image Collection. |
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