Item Info

Item 1, top left:  Image of the (then) new location at 715 Spruce Street for the American Catholic Historical Society.  Founded in 1884, it is the oldest Catholic historical society in America.  The building shown here was built in 1821 for merchant Whitton Evens; it then became the city home of banker Nicholas Biddle from 1828-1939; it was then occupied from 1853-1894 by physician James Kitchen.  At the time of this article, it had just been purchased by the Catholic Historical Society, which occupied it until 1945, then moved to its present address at 263 S. 4th Street.  Photograph for an unidentified publication, 10 x 19 cm, undated.  To read a detailed article about this building, the Biddles, and the Society, see the previous item, #pdcc03071.

Item 2, top right:  Image of the Saint Boromeo Seminary, in Wynnewood, PA.  It was founded in 1832 by the Most Reverend Francis P. Kenrick, third Bishop of Philadelphia.  After several Center City locations, the seminary moved in 1871 to this location at Wynnewood Road & Hazelhurst Avenue, built by architects Addison Hutton and Samuel Sloan.  The seminary continued to grow, and this building is now only part of a much larger campus.  Engraving for an unidentified publication, 11.5 x 8 cm, 1870s. 

Item 3, center right:  Image of an octagonal schoolhouse in Milestown, a former district of Philadelphia, in the vicinity of today's Old York Road & Cheltenham Avenue.  Schoolhouses of this type were generally built in the late 1770s to early 1800s.  Engraving for an unidentified publication, 6 x 5.5 cm, undated.

Item 4, bottom:  Image of the Ridgway Library, designed by Addison Hutton in the Greek Revival style, and built between 1873-1878.  The Library Company of Philadelphia (LCP), founded by Benjamin Franklin and others in 1731, operated out of several locations, until many of its considerable holdings were consolidated in this new building, the Ridgway Library, in 1878.  Because of the Ridgway's distance from Center City, other more centrally-located buildings became the LCP's main centers; the Ridgway was eventually taken over by other organizations, finally becoming the home of today's Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, since 1997.  Engraving, 18 x 10.5 cm, c. 1878.