Bulletin Building Featured in The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Bulletin Building and adjacent Drexel Square will breathe new life into an important Philadelphia landmark and will help anchor the Schuylkill Yards Innovation District.
KieranTimberlake's work on Philadelphia's iconic Bulletin Building was recently featured in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Commissioned by the Brandywine Realty Trust, the project reimagines the former headquarters of the now-defunct Evening Bulletin newspaper at 30th and Market Streets in the city's booming University City neighborhood.
Constructed in 1954, the original building demonstrated renowned architect George Howe's mastery of expansive, unadorned walls. As the printing and publishing headquarters for the country's largest circulation afternoon newspaper, Howe's complex was both modern and state-of-the-art. A monumental response to the grandeur of the adjacent and iconic 30th Street Station, the massive building was simple but powerful. Its elevated volume sat atop a slender base with a smooth masonry skin, an expansive, horizontal eastern facade, subtle asymmetry, and assertive signage. These features were reinforced with smooth, monochromatic glazed brick, curved corners, deep set ribbon windows, a prominent use of stainless steel, asymmetrically placed entries and lobby, and a long exterior loggia.
Additional windows cut into the facade during a renovation in the 1990s brought much-needed light to the space, but also diminished the building's impressive monumentality. In re-imagining the structure, we retain the scale, massing, and character of the original building while evolving the design to accommodate new uses and standards. Our design restores and enhances the original fabric and features while also incorporating evolutionary interventions including a new red-framed glass facade and alphabet-patterned frit—an homage to the building's history. The "Bulletin" sign featured so prominently in Howe's original design will also be restored with modern, industrial graphics that play off and complement the neighboring 30th Street Station. The new Bulletin Building, along with the adjacent Drexel Square park designed by West 8, will be a dynamic centerpiece for the Schuylkill Yards development.
Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron called the Bulletin Building's renovation “a smart bit of urban planning” whose adjacent park, Drexel Square, will “offer a pleasing shot of green amid all the urban clutter on the [30th Street Station's] west side.”
More information about this project is available in The Philadelphia Inquirer.