Philadelphia Museum of Art Expands into 1927 Office Building
By Krista Walton | From Preservation | May 8, 2007
For the past six years, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has been renovating and expanding its neighbor, the 1927 Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building. When the building reopens in September, the downtown Philadelphia landmark will provide some much-needed wall space for the museum's collections, which began outgrowing the museum more than 25 years ago.
"The Perelman Building marks the first expansion of the museum's footprint since 1928," says Gail Harrity, chief operating officer of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. "This is an important milestone in our master plan to expand and modernize the entire museum over the next 10 to 15 years."
Constructed by Philadelphia-based architects Zantzinger, Borie, and Medary, the Perelman Building originally served as the headquarters of the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company. Famed sculptor Lee Lawrie (whose work adorns such buildings as Rockefeller Center and the Library of Congress) contributed the elaborate art deco ornamentation to the building's facade. In 1982 it was restored and later acquired by the Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company; in 2001, the museum began drawing up plans to use the building for gallery space.
The New York-based architectural firm Gluckman Mayner spearheaded the renovation and construction of a 59,000-square-foot addition. "Most of the renovation work was in conserving details and features of the original structure, but the building wasn't in particularly bad shape," says Scott Watson, Gluckman Mayner spokesman. The biggest challenge, Watson says, was preserving the original structure while making sure that it would meet the needs of the museum: "We had to take something that was built as an office building and come up with a way to make it appropriate for a museum space."
The expansion, which includes space for a café and museum store, was not designed to replicate the art deco Perelman Building. "It's clearly a new structure," Watson says. "We wanted to respect the existing structure and come up with a contemporary building that would complement it, but would still meet the needs of the museum."
When it opens to the public in September, the expanded Perelman Building will house exhibition space for the museum's photography and textiles collections, a library, and an educational resource center.
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