52034
The Municipal Services Building in the Centre City District in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Built in 1962, the building won numerous accolades from architectural critics, who praised the compact, efficient design that was in global vogue at the time. But even back then, the blocky, Brutalist structure rubbed people the wrong way — and not just because it’s where they were sent to pay bills.
“There are differences of opinion about the design of the Municipal Services Building and how much beauty it radiates,” the Inquirer reported upon its opening in 1965. To some, it was a depressing ode to government mundanity; to others, an underappreciated landmark of Center City’s post-World War II rebirth. On a more practical level, MSB exists because the city was growing — and its government needed room to expand beyond City Hall.
Part of a global trend in architecture at the time, MSB was considered revolutionary for downtown Philadelphia. It was, to some extent, a symbol of the post-war rebirth of big city centers in the U.S.
Around the same time that Edmund Bacon was fashioning Philly’s Brutalist downtown, other local architects were drafting ideas that appeared radical in contrast. Philly’s famed Louis Kahn and Anne Tyng came up with an idea in the mid-1950s called “City Tower,” a zig-zagging juggernaut of a skyscraper that looked like it crawled off the storyboard for a Blade Runner spinoff.
Information Source:
billypenn.com/2020/04/05/how-the-municipal-services-build...
52034
The Municipal Services Building in the Centre City District in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Built in 1962, the building won numerous accolades from architectural critics, who praised the compact, efficient design that was in global vogue at the time. But even back then, the blocky, Brutalist structure rubbed people the wrong way — and not just because it’s where they were sent to pay bills.
“There are differences of opinion about the design of the Municipal Services Building and how much beauty it radiates,” the Inquirer reported upon its opening in 1965. To some, it was a depressing ode to government mundanity; to others, an underappreciated landmark of Center City’s post-World War II rebirth. On a more practical level, MSB exists because the city was growing — and its government needed room to expand beyond City Hall.
Part of a global trend in architecture at the time, MSB was considered revolutionary for downtown Philadelphia. It was, to some extent, a symbol of the post-war rebirth of big city centers in the U.S.
Around the same time that Edmund Bacon was fashioning Philly’s Brutalist downtown, other local architects were drafting ideas that appeared radical in contrast. Philly’s famed Louis Kahn and Anne Tyng came up with an idea in the mid-1950s called “City Tower,” a zig-zagging juggernaut of a skyscraper that looked like it crawled off the storyboard for a Blade Runner spinoff.
Information Source:
billypenn.com/2020/04/05/how-the-municipal-services-build...