![]() In 2004 Montgomery County Judge Stanley Ott gave legal approval to move the Barnes art collection from suburban Lower Merion to the Parkway. The Barnes Foundation ran into financial difficulties, and litigation ensued to move the entire collection to a new building on the Cret-designed Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Shortly after Barnes' death, litigation was successful in incrementally opening his museum to the public. In his will he ordered that the collection be kept as he had spatially arranged it, off limits to the public, in the building in Lower Merion. Barnes had nothing but disdain for the entitled aristocracy of Philadelphia, and made his museum private. To house the growing collection, Barnes hired Franco-American architect Paul Philippe Cret to build an educational institution and home in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia. Barnes Company to the Zonite Corporation, just three months before the stock market crash.īarnes was wealthy after the sale, and he turned to his high school classmate and artist William Glackens to purchase art to start a teaching collection. It was used to prevent gonorrhea infections of the eyes of newborns, a significant problem in the days before treatments for systemic gonorrhea were available. Barnes bought out his partner's interest in the company and his secret formula, and trademarked Argyrol. ![]() His German business associate developed a silver nitrate solution, subsequently called Argyrol. He disliked clinical care, and decided to spend his time in pharmaceutical research. Barnes (1872-1951) was born in Philadelphia and attended Central High School and then the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. The settlement of a legal case provided the final impetus for the move.Īlbert C. In practice, their stays were extended if there were no placement openings. In theory, youths were to remain there for ten days or less, until placement could be made elsewhere. The Youth Study Center was plagued by overcrowding, and by physical damage due to financial issues and repeated attempts at escape. He was chosen to create two pieces for placement on the Parkway side of the building. In 1952 sculptor Waldemar Raemisch, had completed The Preacher, a stone sculpture for the Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial on Kelly Drive. The Center offered social and educational programs to steer young offenders from further illegal activities. The Youth Study Center provided a secure, short-term residential detention facility for youths ages 13 to 20 awaiting court hearings. The two buildings were connected by two-story pedestrian bridges on the second and third floors. The entrance to the complex was at the three-story brick building on Pennsylvania Avenue. The five-story building on the Parkway was sheathed in limestone panels with aluminum framed strip windows and two tiers of balconies. ![]() The Youth Study Center, completed in 1952, consisted of two reinforced steel and concrete buildings with a central courtyard. Behind these trees was to be the first modernistic building on the Parkway. There was a mandatory 200 foot setback from the Parkway for buildings, so the landscaping, designed by Horace Fleisher, included allees of London Plane trees fronting the Parkway. After two years of further public debate, local architect firm Carroll, Grisdale, and van Allen were given the commission to build the "Youth Study Center" on the Parkway, parallel to the Parkway. The Municipal/Family Court had been built in the classical style one block away in 1941, and this was another impetus to having the detention center nearby. The nobility of its purpose, to turn around wayward youth, was felt compatible with the nobility of the parkway, with the stipulation that any building not look like a penal institution. Despite these objections, in 1944 the City Council approved the planned construction of the detention center on the Parkway. Both sites were opposed by Paul Cret, the head of the Art Jury, the committee tasked with ensuring proper aesthetic uses of the Parkway. It was decided to build a new detention center at 20th and Callowhill, later changed to 20th and the Ben Franklin Parkway. By the 1930s it was realized that the Detention Center at 22nd and Arch was too small.
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