{"nrhp_refnum":"87001968","name":"Physicians and Dentists Building","other_names":["Professional Building"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"1831--1833 Chestnut St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Philadelphia","county":"Philadelphia","state":"PA","lat":39.95180766300007,"lon":-75.17124103699996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1987-11-05","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Commerce","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A ten-story and attic office building on the north side of the 1800 block of Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, built in 1896 as rental offices for physicians and dentists. It is a steel-frame tall building with a limestone-clad street facade and brick side walls.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the building is significant as a work of the Wilson Brothers, an innovative engineering and architectural firm, and as an early tall office building designed to serve a specialized professional clientele. It is also described as one of the few surviving tall office buildings from Philadelphia's final decades of the nineteenth century, and it retains original structural and cladding systems.","narrative":"Built in 1896 on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, this ten-story office building with an attic was designed as rental space for doctors and dentists serving downtown and the nearby Rittenhouse neighborhood. Its steel frame, limestone street facade with a projecting entrance portico on Corinthian columns, and balcony separating the tenth story from the attic reflect the turn-of-the-century skyscraper. The building is important for its structural innovations. The Wilson Brothers, the firm behind it, are credited with pioneering windbracing of steel frames and shelf angles for masonry curtain walls, both used here. The basement retains riveted steel columns and girders, and the attic holds hollow terra cotta floor elements described as a rare survivor of a transitional fireproof system. Among Philadelphia's surviving tall buildings from the late nineteenth century, it is regarded as one of the best preserved.","period_of_significance":"1896","architect_builder":"Wilson Bros. (architects); Geo. Payne (builder)","architectural_style":null,"criteria":[],"status_note":null,"vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:34.172391-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_PA/87001968.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/87001968/525a5e8006-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/87001968/525a5e8006-1600.webp","licence":"Public domain","author":"Smallbones","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Physicians_and_Dentists_Building.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Smallbones</a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Physicians_and_Dentists_Building.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/71997134","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicians_and_Dentists_Building","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7189663"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/pennsylvania/philadelphia/physicians-and-dentists-building-87001968/"}