IntroductionWhile many are familiar with the University of Pennsylvania Museum as an archaeological treasure house, few know about its role in Philadelphia culture, the story of its growth as a public museum, or its architectural history.
Philadelphia began to expand westward after the Civil War, a growth facilitated by the construction of great bridges across the Schuylkill River at Market, Chestnut, Walnut, and South streets. The University of Pennsylvania participated in that expansion by relocating from Center City to the other side of the Schuylkill River during the 1870s. A museum built on the Schuylkill's west bank, located between the University and the City, served as a metaphorical bridge between the two.
This museum celebrated the centennial of its first building in 1999. Photographs enable us to look back at the Museum's foundation, and forward to its future. Using such frozen moments in time as if they were artifacts, we can conduct an archaeological investigation of this archaeological museum, seeing how changing architectural taste has brought it full circle, during a century of construction, from the Victorian revivalism and eclecticism of its first architects to the post-Modern present.
Douglas M. Haller, former Museum Archivist and author of this centennial view of the Museum's buildings (which appears in the Museum's Expedition Magazine [vol 41, no 1]), is now Coordinator of Audiovisual Collections and Exhibitions in the Walter Reuther Library at Wayne State University, Detroit.
All illustrations appearing in the right frame are from the collections of the University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives unless otherwise credited. The author would like to thank Alessandro Pezzati, Acting Archivist, UPM, for verifying many historical facts cited within this essay, and for scanning the images for publication.
This article, updated in part for this website in June 2002, may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of Expedition Magazine. The literary content is owned by the author from whom permission to reproduce must be obtained. The individual illustrations cannot be reproduced without written permission from repositories of the originals.
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See the Museum Master Plan for more history on the building.