Youth Study Center/Barnes
Since 1826, children who were convicted of crimes in Philadelphia were housed separately from adult criminals. For example, there was the House of Refuge at 22nd and Brown briefly mentioned in our website article here. Children awaiting trial, however, were still detained with adult criminals. In 1901 the Pennsylvania Society for the Protection of Children from Cruelty was established and the City Councils passed the House of Detention Act, which, as the bill's name suggests, recommended the building of a combined juvenile detention center and court to keep child and adult criminal detainees separated. The view, on paper, turned from punishment to education and love as a way to reform. In 1909 a House of Detention was built at 22nd and Arch Street, a beautiful four-story building of granite, limestone, brick, and terra cotta. No name was placed on the building so as not to mark its purpose in the residential neighborhood, nor leave any stigma on the young temporary inhabitants.
Photo from 1909 looking northeast at the Juvenile Court and House of Detention at 22nd and Arch Streets. This was designed by controversial municipal architect Philip Johnson.
Same view today of the apartment building it has become. The rooftop exercise yard has been closed in. For more on this building see the Hidden City article from 2012 here.
Around the time that the House of Detention was finished, work had begun on the new Fairmount Parkway, a diagonal grand boulevard that would cut across, and wipe out, the regular street grid of Philadelphia.
Portion of 1875 City Atlas showing the residential block that became the Youth Study Center. Vine Street is horizontal on the bottom and Wood Street just north of Pearl Street. 20th is on the right and 21st on the left. The Logan Square Presbyterian Church is at the northwest corner of 20th and Vine Streets. This block was completely built out with residences as far back as the 1850s.
Photo from 1895 from outside link here.
This Presbyterian Church was built at the northwest corner of 20th and Vine in 1849. It was purchased in 1910 and demolished as part of the Fairmount Parkway project. Estimates place the total number of buildings demolished for the Parkway at 1,300-2,000, including homes, schools, churches, businesses, and industries.
Portion of 1934 aerial photo showing, on the right edge, the typical mid-19th century rowhomes occupying what is left of the residential block seen in the 1875 map
By the 1930s it was realized that the Detention Center at 22nd and Arch was too small.
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It was decided to build a new detention center at 20th and Callowhill, later changed to 20th and the Ben Franklin Parkway. Both sites were opposed by Paul Cret, the head of the Art Jury, the committee tasked with ensuring proper aesthetic uses of the Parkway. Despite these objections, in 1944 the City Council approved the planned construction of the detention center on the Parkway. The nobility of its purpose, to turn around wayward youth, was felt compatible with the nobility of the parkway, with the stipulation that any building not look like a penal institution. The Municipal/Family Court had been built in the classical style one block away in 1941, and this was another impetus to having the detention center nearby. After two years of further public debate, local architect firm Carroll, Grisdale, and van Allen were given the commission to build the "Youth Study Center" on the Parkway, parallel to the Parkway.
There was a mandatory 200 foot setback from the Parkway for buildings, so the landscaping, designed by Horace Fleisher, included allees of London Plane trees fronting the Parkway. Behind these trees was to be the first modernistic building on the Parkway. The Youth Study Center, completed in 1952, consisted of two reinforced steel and concrete buildings with a central courtyard. The five-story building on the Parkway was sheathed in limestone panels with aluminum framed strip windows and two tiers of balconies. The entrance to the complex was at the three-story brick building on Pennsylvania Avenue. The two buildings were connected by two-story pedestrian bridges on the second and third floors.
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The Youth Study Center provided a secure, short-term residential detention facility for youths ages 13 to 20 awaiting court hearings. The Center offered social and educational programs to steer young offenders from further illegal activities.
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In 1952 sculptor Waldemar Raemisch, had completed The Preacher, a stone sculpture for the Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial on Kelly Drive. He was chosen to create two pieces for placement on the Parkway side of the building.
Summary of the purpose of the Youth Study Center from an exhibit of Parkway buildings at the Free Library in the 1980s.
1952 photo of the Parkway side
The claustrophobia produced by the few strip windows is counteracted by the open space provided by the balconies, but how many penal institutions have balconies?
The balcony windows would eventually be boarded up.
Another 1952 photo showing the texture provided by the limestone panels. At a distance it still looked like a concrete bunker.
View looking southwest in 1959 at the Pennsylvania Avenue building. The angled windows on the third floor are in the classrooms. The 9th District Police Station was being built directly across Pennsylvania Avenue at this time.
Photo from Youth Study Center Annual Report (1959-1960)
View of the Youth Study Center in 1987 looking over the outdoor spaces on the south side of the concrete granary.
Cross section view of plans from "Hospital, School, Guardhouse" in Architectural Forum, February 1953
Overhead view of plans from "Hospital, School, Guardhouse" in Architectural Forum, February 1953
Classroom on the 3rd floor of the Pennsylvania Avenue building, from "Hospital, School, Guardhouse" in Architectural Forum, February 1953
Dayroom in Parkway building in 1953.
The Franklin Institute rises above the trees in the background.
Photo from Youth Study Center Annual Report (May 1952 - April 1954)
Not enough beds.
Photo from a story critical of overcrowding in the Evening Bulletin in 1963
There are a total of 63 photos from the Bulletin starting here.
And not aging well. This is a photo of a room, from the Evening Bulletin in 1977.
Near the end in 2007: the uninviting building surrounded by a wall, the wall being at least more like Girard College than the Eastern State Penitentiary.
The Parkway facade has been removed in February of 2009, exposing the soft blue color of the dormitory rooms on the top three floors. Photo courtesy of Jim Fennell.
1984 photo showing the two sculptural groups
The sculptural groups The Great Mother, foreground, and The Great Doctor, relocated in 2008 from the Youth Study Center to the School of the Future at 4021 Parkside Avenue.
The Youth Study Center was plagued by overcrowding, and by physical damage due to financial issues and repeated attempts at escape. In theory, youths were to remain there for ten days or less, until placement could be made elsewhere. In practice, their stays were extended if there were no placement openings. A new facility was needed. The settlement of a legal case provided the final impetus for the move.
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Albert C. Barnes (1872-1951) was born in Philadelphia and attended Central High School and then the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. He disliked clinical care, and decided to spend his time in pharmaceutical research. His German business associate developed a silver nitrate solution, subsequently called Argyrol. Barnes bought out his partner's interest in the company and his secret formula, and trademarked Argyrol. It was used to prevent gonorrhea infections of the eyes of newborns, a significant problem in the days before treatments for systemic gonorrhea were available. In July 1929, Barnes sold the A.C. Barnes Company to the Zonite Corporation, just three months before the stock market crash.
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Barnes was wealthy after the sale, and he turned to his high school classmate and artist William Glackens to purchase art to start a teaching collection. To house the growing collection, Barnes hired Franco-American architect Paul Philippe Cret to build an educational institution and home in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia. Barnes had nothing but disdain for the entitled aristocracy of Philadelphia, and made his museum private. In his will he ordered that the collection be kept as he had spatially arranged it, off limits to the public, in the building in Lower Merion.
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Shortly after Barnes' death, litigation was successful in incrementally opening his museum to the public. The Barnes Foundation ran into financial difficulties, and litigation ensued to move the entire collection to a new building on the Cret-designed Benjamin Franklin Parkway. In 2004 Montgomery County Judge Stanley Ott gave legal approval to move the Barnes art collection from suburban Lower Merion to the Parkway. The Youth Study Center on the Parkway was demolished in 2008, and eventually moved into its new building at 48th and Haverford Avenue in December 2012. Also in 2008, work began on the new building at the Parkway site to house the Barnes collection, and this opened in 2012. Architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien recreated the gallery layout in the Lower Merion building, and perhaps inadvertently, the exterior appearance of the Youth Study Center. The collections are in the south building, along the Parkway. The north building houses all the ancillaries of a modern museum: reception lobby, restaurant, library, and space for temporary exhibits. The two buildings are capped by a length of light tower that allows diffused light into the interior, and cantilevers dramatically at the northwest end of the museum. The entire interior is seven times larger than the Cret-designed building in Lower Merion.
The Barnes collections total over 2,000 objects, including possibly the largest collection of French masters outside of Paris, with an estimated value of approximately 25 billion dollars.
Portrait of Albert Barnes, by Giorgio de Chirico, 1926
This painting is located in the Barnes Museum, along with 12 other de Chirico works in the Barnes collection
A caricature of Barnes from 1937 by Lou Hirshman. The despotic Barnes is being compared to PT Barnum, but with the former keeping his "Big Top" restricted. The source of his money, Argyrol, and his fondness for African art are pictured. Hirshman had been a member of the faculty at the Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia for 17 years. (Photo credit here).
The new Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center in West Philadelphia.
It opened in December, 2012, having cost $110 million, with beds for 150 residents, ten classrooms, a gym, health clinic, outdoor recreation space, and Family Court rooms. If you are keeping track of dates, in the interval from 2008 to 2012 the Youth Study Center was housed in the former Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute at 3232 Henry Avenue in East Falls.
