Page:Our Philadelphia (Pennell, 1914).djvu/546

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526
OUR PHILADELPHIA

sion of the town that winter we ought to try to forget instead of commemorating its feasts—that winter when Philadelphia danced and Washington and his troops starved. Now Philadelphia threatens another blot as ugly by upholding the citizens who would have kept the British there altogether. However, this is as yet only a threat, Philadelphians are too preoccupied in their struggle for survival.


IV

Not only the new patriotism, but the new architecture is Colonial. For long after Colonial days Philadelphia kept to red brick and white facings in town, to grey stone and white porches in Germantown, often losing the old dignity and fine proportions, but preserving the unity, the harmony of Penn's original scheme, and the repose that is the inevitable result of unity. But there were many terrible breaks before and during my time—breaks that gave us the Public Buildings and Memorial Hall and many of the big banks and insurance offices down town, and a long list of regrettable mistakes;—breaks that burdened us with the brown stone period fortunately never much in favour, and the Furness period which I could wish had been less in favour so much too lavish was its gift of undesirable originality, and the awful green stone period of which a church here and a big mansion there and substantial buildings out at the University, too substantial to be pulled down for many a day, rise, a solid reproach to