4643 Frankford Avenue - Western Savings Fund / First Pennsylvania Bank Facades

[Western Saving Fund Society]
Frankford Office: 4643-4645 Frankford Avenue
(Willing, Sims & Talbutt, Architects)
Willing, Sims & Talbutt Collection, Athenaeum of Philadelphia.
Local ID #: 124-P-021-008

Bank of Louisville -
(Library of Congress)

I have to remark that I can remember when the facade of 4643 Frankford Avenue as the Western Savings Fund building looked a lot like the classic Bank of Louisville (built 1830 - Library of Congress photo).

That then First Pennsylvania bank took over the building and installed the present windowless two tone blue polished brick facade in the early to mid 1960s.  Have just found a partial photo of the original facade (above). 

The new design made no discernible structural changes in the front of the building but merely boxed in the two main columns, and exterior porch, and bricked the whole thing over. 

Sharps' - Fairmount Rifle Works - "West" Philadelphia - N 24th St Below Wallace St ( Fairmount ) - Advertisement 1866

Texas Advertisement - 1858

1875 Hopkins City Atlas

USS Arkansas - Tonawanda - Philadelphia Southern Mail Steamship Company - 1866

(click on image for enlargement)



The Philadelphia Southern Mail Steamship Company - 1866

Cross-referencing history, per an earlier blog entry of an illustration from 1866, the image of a steamer is a likely sister ship or the original image of the Tonawanda, aka USS Arkansas in the Civil War blockading southern shipping. This pointed out to me by a Maritime Archaeologist Matthew Lawrence.  



USS Arkansas (1863), a screw steamer originally names the Tonawanda that served in the American Civil War. After the war she was named Tonawanda and lost off Key Largo in 1866. ~~ Wikipedia

Video and Illustration references :
Matthew Lawrence

Maritime Archaeologist

Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary

95230 Overseas Hwy
Key Largo, FL 33037
Office: 305-434-9383

Mobile: 617-827-4368
Matthew.Lawrence@noaa.gov

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Park (Empire) Theatre - Broad Street and Fairmount Avenue - 1911 - 1914

Postcard 1911 - Amazon

The Wanamaker Diary - 1914


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Empire Theatre - Broad Street and Fairmount Avenue - 1914

The Wanamaker Diary - 1914


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Grand Opera House - Broad Street and Montgomery Avenue - 1914

The Wanamaker Diary - 1914


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Gill & Company - York and Thompson Streets - The Architectural Record December 1910

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General U.S. Grant's Reception and Parade in the City December 16, 1879 - Leslie's Illustrated 3 Jan 1880

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Dedication of Elks Monument - Mount Moriah Cemetery - Leslie's Illustrated - 2 Oct 1880

Bronze Statue of Matthias W. Baldwin - 1906

BRONZE: 

STATUE OF MATTHIAS W. BALDWIN

BY HERBERT ADAMS

This memorial to the founder of the great industry which bears his name, formerly erected in a grass plot at Broad and Spring Garden Streets, was presented to the City of Philadelphia, through this Association, by the firm of Burnham, Williams & Co., proprietors of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, on June 2, 1906.

Removed in 1921 and placed temporarily on the City Hall Plaza.

Source: Fairmount Park Art Association; an account of its origin and Activites from its Foundation in 1871... Fairmount Park Art Association, 1921.

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