BNY Mellon Center Philadelphia Building

The BNY Mellon Center Philadelphia Building is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed between 1986 and 1987 by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, and built between 1988 and 1990 in Philadelphia, PA.

BNY Mellon Center Philadelphia Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The building has changed names several times over the years, and is also known as:

• Mellon Bank Center between 1990 and 2009.
• Nine Penn Center.

Its precise street address is 1735 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA. You can also find it on the map here.

The BNY Mellon Center Philadelphia Building has received multiple architecture awards for its architectural design since 1990. The following is a list of such prizes and awards:

• Building Excellence Award in 1992
• Certificate of Engineering Excellence in 1991

The building has been restored 2 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 2019 and 2021.

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the BNY Mellon Center Philadelphia Building a reality:

• WSP Cantor Seinuk in charge of Structural Engineering
• Turner Construction as the Main Contractor
• CommonWealth REIT as the Main Developer

The BNY Mellon Center Philadelphia Building can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The BNY Mellon Center Philadelphia Building was designed in 1986. At that time Postmodernism was the prevailing style. Fresh, bold and daring, architects were exploring the freedom of designing without having to follow the strict, sometimes arbitrary rules of a specific architectural movement (which ironically became a movement itself). The BNY Mellon Center Philadelphia Building was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.

The BNY Mellon Center Philadelphia Building uses a frame structure made of steel and concrete columns and beams.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features stone panels up to the 10th floor and a curtain wall of glass and ornamental aluminum from the 11th to the 54th floor. Each facade is organized in three vertical stripes. The stripes on the side empathize horizontal divisions, whereas the central stripe empathizes the verticals by replicating the interior structural pillars with aluminum mullions.

The building is crowned with a unique pyramid-shaped structure that has become an icon of the Philadelphia skyline.