1899 The Free Museum of Science and Art

Taken from the roof of College Hall on 20 May 1891, the photograph to the left looks southeast over the South Street Bridge, railroad tracks, and Schuylkill River toward Philadelphia's Center City. A small dwelling sits at the south corner of 34th and Spruce Sts. (right foreground), a large stone barn is behind, with a bathhouse on South St. (center middleground). The large parcel of depressed land across South St. from the bathhouse is the future site of Franklin Field, where a succession of stadiums would rise face-to-face with the expanding Museum. This swampy wasteland near the Blockley Almshouse was eventually given by the City to the University for public improvement purposes.

Wilson Eyre headed the team of architectural firms selected to design the new museum. Although Eyre was known among the City's elite for gracious residences, this structure would be the largest public building of his career. Influenced by architecture he had seen in Italy during his childhood, he selected the Northern Italian Renaissance style. It was not a pure style, however, as Eyre incorporated eclectic features and details to represent the internationalism of the collections within. One outstanding example is the Asian-style entrance gateway. Eyre witnessed the completion of only four sections of the vast Museum complex before the Great Depression interrupted the building program. Even in an uncompleted state it would stand as one of the foremost Victorian-era structures in the City. During the three decades that the original buildings rose (1899-1929), the 1896 master plan was adhered to, although the architects practicing in the partnerships changed.

Eyre and the other architects had a vision of a complex of buildings situated in a nine-acre landscape. Three central rotundas would be devoted to the ancient civilizations of Greece & Rome, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, flanked by courtyard buildings dedicated to the traditional cultures of America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. Parks containing fountains and pools, with gardens featuring trees and plants from around the world, would complete the eclectic Victorian extravaganza. The shaded portion of the plan shows what was erected in 1899, the first courtyard section at the northwest corner of the complex. Museum founder William Pepper's premature death in 1898 caused the first building to be reconceived as his memorial, due largely to the efforts of Sara Yorke Stevenson (1847-1921), first curator of the Egyptian and Mediterranean sections, who had worked closely with him to create a separate museum building on campus.

Aspects of the Museum complex were revised over the years in numerous drawings, but the basic concept remained the same as in the 1896 plan. In the 1911 sketch above, the central courtyard entrance building is shown as semicircular in design. When it was actually constructed in 1929 as the fourth section of the complex, the decision was made to straighten it.

The details of the 1899 building were particularly fine: floral and faunal glass mosaics by the Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company, sculpture (above) by Alexander Stirling Calder, and marble medallions by John Ross of New York City. The white marble medallions are either symbolic representations of the curatorial collections at the time of the 1899 opening, or of the Museum's general areas of interest. In the examples shown, the Assyrian relief is appropriately on the exterior of the Near East gallery. The Greek relief, believed to represent architecture, is placed on the 33rd St. facade, which originally overlooked a terraced park.

The new Museum (renamed the Free Museum of Science and Art) was a collaborative effort: land donated by the City, a considerable sum contributed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the building provided by private benefactors. At the opening, the Museum was arranged as a microcosm of the scheme planned for the entire complex. On the upper floor the three main galleries substituted for the planned rotundas by exhibiting the Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian collections. Note the skylight and electric lighting. During the day the building was flooded with natural light from windows and skylights. At night this effect was maintained by electric lights in glass shades suspended from skylights in wrought iron fixtures. In fact, the Museum was one of the first fully electric public buildings in the City. On the lower floor the traditional cultures of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and America were exhibited in galleries substituting for the courtyard buildings that were to be constructed one day. Special collections (coins, fans, musical instruments, engraved gems) were also displayed on this floor, as was the Sommerville Buddhist Temple.