Page:Our Philadelphia (Pennell, 1914).djvu/303

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE ROMANCE OE WORK
283

and the dirt that the Russian Jew takes with him wherever he goes. In not another American town had the old streets then changed so little since Colonial days, in not another were they so well worth keeping unchanged. I had not to dive into musty archives to unearth the self-evident fact that the early Friends, when they left England, packed up with their liberty of conscience the love of beauty in architecture and, what was more practical, the money to pay for it; that, in a fine period of English architecture, they got good English architects,—Wren said to have been of the number—to design not merely their public buildings, but their private houses; that, their Founder setting the example, they carried over in their personal baggage panelling, carvings, ironwork, red and black brick, furniture, and the various details they were not likely to procure in Philadelphia until Philadelphians had moved from their caves and the primeval forest had been cut down; that when Philadelphia could contribute its share of the work, they modified the design to suit climate, circumstances, and material, and bequeathed to us a Philadelphia with so much local character that it never could be mistaken for an English town.

This used to strike the intelligent foreigner as long as Philadelphia was content to have a character of its own and did not bother to be in architectural or any other movements. "Not a distressingly new-looking city, for the Queen Anne style in vogue when its prosperity began