A Chance Encounter

This is a tale of frustration followed by great joy.

On my way home from the Atlantic City Pool & Spa Show last month, I paused in Philadelphia to spend three days visiting with two of my daughters. Beyond catching up with them, I had a mission: I wanted to see the remodeled fountain in Franklin Square. It was under construction the last time I visited, and my understanding is that it is now spectacular.

No such luck on a cold Saturday in January: The fountain had been winterized and joined a list of about 50 other major watershapes I’ve visited through the years that have been seasonally or otherwise non-functional when I’ve stopped by to see them. I’ll get back to Philadelphia someday, I’m sure, but this was a sharp disappointment just the same.

After Chloe and I had made the long (and unnecessary) walk to get to Franklin Square from my hotel, we met Leah at the train station and set out again, first for brunch, then for more mid-winter sightseeing. Our path happened to take us by the Curtis Building, and Chloe recalled that friends had told her there was a cool mural in its lobby.

No kidding. The 15-foot-tall, 49-foot-wide mural, entitled “The Dream Garden,” was designed by the renowned artist/illustrator Maxfield Parrish and executed entirely in Favrile glass tile under the direction of Louis Tiffany at Tiffany Studios around 1915. Made up of approximately 100,000 individually applied pieces, it was installed in 1916 and is an astonishing achievement. Until recently, in fact, it was the largest all-glass-tile mural in the world.

But Chloe had another surprise for me: While I studied the mural, she’d gone exploring and found a fountain she thought I should see. We all followed a lengthy corridor around the side of the mural before gaining access to a much larger lobby space – actually a huge, 12-story-tall atrium – that serves as the building’s main public entrance. And there it was: a composition in colored granites that just about knocked my socks off with its low-slung elegance, scope and scale.

The building was once the home of a major American publishing company. Curtis Publishing launched The Ladies’ Home Journal in 1883, acquired The Saturday Evening Post in 1897 and grew to become one of the country’s most powerful media outlets. It’s now essentially gone, but in its day the business founded by Cyrus Curtis had the wherewithal and desire to commission great works of public art that have stood the test of time.

The odd thing is that both the mural and the fountain have tended to be underappreciated in a city where Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell exercise their magnetic presence just a few yards away. In fact, the mural was so little regarded that it was purchased for relocation to Las Vegas in 1998. This created enough of an uproar that the city and a bunch of sympathetic philanthropies bought it back; it has since been designated as a “Historic Object” that won’t be going anywhere.

The fountain has a not-nearly-as-dramatic salvation story. The massive Beaux-Arts building was built in 1910 and, soon after its hundredth birthday, was converted into 63 apartments. The atrium might have been repurposed at the time, but instead it was all beautifully restored – including the fortunate fountain – and now hosts social gatherings and weddings.

This is all wonderful, but it’s a far cry from the building’s busy heyday, when the bustling atrium and fountain both embodied and projected the power and influence of a grand publishing enterprise: I can easily imagine both spaces offered a humbling welcome to job applicants and vendors who wanted Mr. Curtis’s attention.

The next time you visit southeastern Pennsylvania and have the opportunity to look in on a pair of the nation’s most hallowed landmarks, remember that there’s another pair of national treasures just a few paces away – and you won’t run into any lines or admission fees!