Guild House is a residential building in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

which is an important and influential work of 20th-century architecture and was the first major work by

Robert Venturi Robert Charles Venturi Jr. (June 25, 1925 – September 18, 2018) was an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major architectural figures of the twentieth century. Together with h ...

. Along with the

Vanna Venturi House The Vanna Venturi House, one of the first prominent works of the postmodern architecture movement, is located in the neighborhood of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States. It was designed by architect Robert Venturi fo ...

it is considered to be one of the earliest expressions of

Postmodern architecture Postmodern architecture is a style or movement which emerged in the 1960s as a reaction against the austerity, formality, and lack of variety of modern architecture, particularly in the international style advocated by Philip Johnson and Henr ...

, and helped establish Venturi as one of the leading architects of the 20th century. The building, which houses apartments for low-income senior citizens, was commissioned by a local Quaker organization, Friends Rehabilitation Program, Inc. and completed in 1963. Employing a combination of nondescript commercial architecture and ironic historical references, Guild House represented a conscious rejection of

Modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

ideals and was widely cited in the subsequent development of the Postmodern movement.

History

Guild House was commissioned by the (Quaker) Friends Neighborhood Guild, a subsidiary of Friends Rehabilitation Program, Inc., as low-income housing for the elderly and built in 1960–63. It was designed by Venturi and Rauch in collaboration with Cope and Lippincott, another Philadelphia firm. In 2004, the building was added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places despite being barely 40 years old at the time.

Architecture

Exterior

The building's architecture combines historical forms with "banal" 20th-century commercialism, hiding a "slyly intellectual agenda" behind its "apparent ordinariness". As Venturi wrote, "Economy dictated not 'advanced' architectural elements, but 'conventional' ones. We did not resist this." The architects used red clay brick and "inelegant" double-hung windows to recall existing

public housing Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, de ...

projects and express "kinship with neighboring inner-city structures", along with a subtle use of ironic ornamental details "intended in some way to express the lives of the elderly." Guild House is a six-story building with a symmetrical facade that steps outward to a monumental, classically ordered entrance pavilion. The facade is anchored by a thick column of polished black granite and crowned with a large arched window opening onto the building's upstairs common area. The ground floor entrance is highlighted with white glazed brick, while a "perfunctory"

string course A belt course, also called a string course or sill course, is a continuous row or layer of stones or brick set in a wall. Set in line with window sills, it helps to make the horizontal line of the sills visually more prominent. Set between the fl ...

in the middle of the fifth floor terminates the facade. According to Venturi, the combination of the latter two elements "sets up a new and larger scale of three stories, juxtaposed on the other smaller scale of six stories demarked by the layer of windows." A large block-letter sign above the entrance spells the name of the building, while the roof was originally crowned with an oversize, nonfunctional television antenna serving as both an abstract sculptural element and a literal representation of the inhabitants' chief pastime. Venturi later explained the architecture of Guild House in the context of his "decorated shed" philosophy:

Interior

The building contains 91 apartment units. The stepped organization of the facade allowed most of the units to have south-, east-, or west-facing windows, giving the inhabitants sunlight and a view of the street below. Winding interior corridors were intended to create a more intimate and informal space. Many of the Apartment units have access to more sunlight, by having windows on more than one wall. Guild House, Vine St., Philly.JPG File:Guildhouse Philly.JPG

References

{{Reflist, 30em Robert Venturi buildings Residential buildings in Philadelphia Apartment buildings in Pennsylvania Postmodern architecture in Pennsylvania Residential buildings completed in 1963 Philadelphia Register of Historic Places 1963 establishments in Pennsylvania