the convention week. The Board readily consented and referred the whole matter back to
its Committee on Architecture to determine the theme and content of the exhibition. This
was a challenge, delivered early in the spring of 1959. The Committee eyed this challenge,
not joyously, for the answer was not easily forthcoming. Committee deliberations produced
a number of varied and exciting subjects before it finally achieved its resolution.

After all, we thought, the Convention will bring to Philadelphia several thousand
architects and their wives from the western and middle states, the southern and the north-
ern states. Some of these visitors might have a vague acquaintance with this city; only a
few would possess an intimate knowledge of its architectural history. Indeed, such intimacy
is probably enjoyed by few persons even among those who count themselves Philadelphians
by birth or adoption. Therefore, we reasoned that in the absence of a comprehensive his-
tory of architecture of the greatest of the eighteenth-century American metropolitan cen-
ters, and the second largest city in the British empire of the same period, an exhibition of
its architecture from the late seventeenth to the middle years of the twentieth century
should be as comprehensive a show of historical building as any ever held in the country.

From the first the exhibition was conceived as a polished mirror of architecture from
the very beginnings of Philadelphia. It should be a reflection of the taste of Philadelphians
in architecture, period by period, phase merging into succeeding phase and culminating
in the year before the exhibition. It could show the charming, amusing, and sometimes
frightening paradoxy of Philadelphia architecture: a Frank Furness' Provident Life and
Trust Company staring in its imaginative boldness across Chestnut Street at the quiet of
Strickland's Second Bank; the starkness of Louis Kahn's University laboratory towering
on the skyline above the Jacobean lacework of Cope & Stewardson's dormitories. It could
be an exciting show, and the book, we hoped, would lead the reader to a deeper knowledge
of Philadelphia architecture.

The Art Alliance Committee, having determined the character of the exhibition, felt
that a complete and accurate catalogue should also be compiled and published. We were
fortunate in having two distinguished art historians as members of the committee, Dr.
George B. Tatum and Dr. David M. Robb. The preparation of the catalogue and the selec-
tion of exhibition material was delegated to Dr. Tatum, Dr. Robb, and the Chairman of
the Committee.

The more the subcommittee for the catalogue talked about its contents and scope, the
repositories wherefrom we might expect to draw illustrative material, and its format, by
that much and more we became aware that a catalogue would be a compromise. Assuredly,
an accurate catalogue of an exhibition is a fine medium for its purpose, but it has severe
limitations in content, warmth, and above all in its restrictions in dealing with the architec-
ture of a society. Thus, we discarded the idea of a catalogue and talked, thereafter, of a
book: a history book of close to three hundred years of Philadelphia architecture. There
was a unanimity of opinion between Dr. Robb and the Chairman of the Committee that
the book should be written by Dr. Tatum. He gracefully accepted the authorship. At this
point the College of Fellows of the A.I.A. joined the Art Alliance as one of the sponsors of
the proposed book and exhibition. This was September, 1959.

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