Coward Shoes at 1122 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia on April 25, 1949 (photograph by Greenfield, viaFree Library of Philadelphia)

Last year, the only surviving commercial work designed by architect Louis I. Kahn was torn down with little fanfare in Philadelphia. Designed in a partnership with another Philadelphia-based 20th-century architect, Oscar Stonorov, the Coward Shoes store at 1118–1120 Chestnut was completed in 1949 at the height of the area’s commercial success. In the years since, the street and the building fell into decades of decline as shopping moved to the suburbs. The first floor of huge windows were converted, and its modernist façade blending into the dilapidation. By the time a permit was issued for its demolition in 2014, most people had forgotten it was anything other than an eyesore.

William Whitaker, curator and collections manager of the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, wrote this of the building’s leveling in a thorough article for Hidden City Philadelphia in August:......Continue Reading

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