HISTORY & SIGNIFICANCE

Like the Denver Mint, Philadelphia’s third incarnation of the Mint grew out of the American Renaissance of the late nineteenth century. During this time a revival of classical architecture swept the nation, producing classically detailed temple fronted buildings, lavish interiors, and grand public spaces. According to architectural historian Richard Guy Wilson, “it was a new sense of history that most directly formed the mental set” of this period. A newfound respect for artistic riches of the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries dominated scholarship and popular literature. Americans of the time came to see their own culture as derived from the lineage of Ancient Greece and Rome, the Italian Renaissance, and early American classicism.

Yet the period was not homogenous in its architectural production. Architectural historian Walter Kidney has characterized the period as one of eclecticism. He also finds problems with some of the federal buildings in the classical vein during this time. He writes, “In essence, a federal building was an office building, but without floor shops and only a few stories high...On a massive basement, often heavily rusticated, half-columns or pilasters rose for three or four stories to support an entablature...Sited at one end of an enclosed open space of the right size...such a building could be quite handsome. Often, however, because of their enclosed look, their superhuman scale, their artificiality of design, and their somber materials...such buildings look self-centered and aloof, mere voids in the busy street scene. Business buildings, even banks, have an air of welcome and life that these pompous nests of officials almost totally lack.” This statement may be exaggerated, but it points to the fact that some, though by no means most, of the buildings in the Beaux Arts mode domineered space and asserted repetitive facades to the street, rather than engaging it harmoniously. In this way, such schemes foreshadowed the deadening effect of many modernist buildings upon the streetscape.

Despite this, the building is adorned with many beautiful and admirable characteristics typical of Beaux Arts architecture. The main lobby is articulated with columnar arcades, a grand staircase, and a Tiffany glass mosaic ceiling. Many rooms are adorned with pilasters, murals, and marble tile or terrazzo floors. The solid and “enclosed” look was felt appropriate to its purposes as an institution of the government and economy.

The main façade articulates the spatial arrangement of the rooms inside, clearly indicating the central lobby and stairs and the long hall of offices to either side of the lobby. The architecture, however, masks the industrial function of the Mint. Such a function held an awkward position in Beaux Arts theory, and in many cases of downtown buildings housing factory-like functions the exterior treatment sought to minimize the industrial presence in order to project a more decorous facade to the street.