{"nrhp_refnum":"83002278","name":"St. John's Church","other_names":["Holy Trinity Romanian Orthodox Church"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"220--230 Brown St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Philadelphia","county":"Philadelphia","state":"PA","lat":39.96301932000006,"lon":-75.14223055899998,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1983-02-24","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture"],"significance_levels":["national"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A church building in the Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, of dark red pressed brick with a Doric-columned entrance tower and a later wooden steeple. The attached rectory and parish hall were built early in the twentieth century in Colonial Revival style.","why_significant":"The nomination argues that St. John's is one of the most important early buildings of free Neoclassicism in America and the best surviving example of that type in Philadelphia. It is the earliest surviving building by William Strickland, one of Benjamin Latrobe's students, and it shows his early design personality. Its later painted interior and steeple are also cited as significant for their association with an early twentieth-century Eastern European immigrant community.","narrative":"Built in brick in 1815-16 in the Northern Liberties district of Philadelphia, St. John's Church is a plain, hard-edged rectangular box whose entrance tower features a tall semicircular arch framing a heavy Doric entablature on two wooden columns. Its architect, William Strickland, was then a young designer trained in the office of Benjamin Latrobe, and the building is regarded as his earliest surviving work. The interior has galleries carried on Doric columns, a semicircular altar portico with Greek Doric columns, and a curved organ loft. The church is valued as one of the few characteristic examples of the brief free Neoclassical style, in which architects drew on Greek and Roman detail while recombining it with new freedom. From the 1910s the building was leased and later owned by a Romanian congregation, which added a wooden steeple and extensive painted decoration, and these later features are also considered significant.","period_of_significance":"1815-1816","architect_builder":"William Strickland, architect","architectural_style":"Free Neoclassical","criteria":["C"],"status_note":"The building continues to serve the Romanian congregation as Holy Trinity Romanian Orthodox Church, which took title in 1972.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:13:16.185408-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_PA/83002278.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/83002278/71da72066b-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/83002278/71da72066b-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 2.0","author":"Eli Pousson","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St._John%27s_Church,_Northern_Liberties.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Eli Pousson</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 2.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St._John%27s_Church,_Northern_Liberties.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/71997422","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_Church,_Philadelphia","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7588623"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/pennsylvania/philadelphia/st-johns-church-83002278/"}