Broad Street Historic District (Additional Documentation)

Broad Street, laid out in Thomas Holme's plan for Philadelphia, runs through the city's center from Cherry to Pine Street and forms a district of civic, financial, commercial and cultural buildings. The first surviving building is John Haviland's Pennsylvania Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb of 1824, a Greek temple design that set the institutional character of the street. Churches, clubs and academies followed in the 1840s and later, including the Union League of 1864 and James H. Windrim's Masonic Temple. After City Hall moved to Broad and Market Streets in the 1870s and 1880s, banks, insurance firms and trust companies built tall office towers along the street, among them the Land Title Towers, the Fidelity Bank and the Girard Trust building. Architects including Frank Furness, Horace Trumbauer, Simon and Simon, and John T. Windrim designed many of these buildings. The street is regarded as the principal concentration of tall buildings in the city.