One South Broad Building

The One South Broad Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by John Torrey Windrim, and built between 1930 and 1932 in Philadelphia, PA.

One South Broad 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:

• Lincoln-Liberty Building between 1932 and 1950.
• Philadelphia National Bank Building between 1950 and 1996.
• One South Broad Building from 1997 until this day.

Its precise street address is 1 South Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA. You can also find it on the map here.

The building has been restored 3 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 1955, 2000 and 2015.

John Torrey Windrim 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 at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was Wanamaker's as the Main Developer.

The One South Broad Building can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The One South Broad Building was completed in 1932, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

The One South Broad Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

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 is a non-load bearing masonry facade. This type of facade became common during the period when buildings, especially taller ones, transitioned from load-bearing wall systems to frame structures.

Frame structures allowed facades to be independent from the building's frame, enabling the use of lighter materials and larger openings. However, it took some time for architects to incorporate these new posibilities into their designs, and so for a while they simply replicated the look and feel fo buildings people where used to seeing.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features Italian granite, used on the street-level facade. The entrance door has metal frames and three-story-high windows. From there on, the facade is clad in a very light-gray limestone.