Upcoming Events
|
History of Rittenhouse Square...Unlike the other outlying squares, the early Southwest Square was never used
as a burial ground, although it did offer pasturage for local livestock and a
convenient dumping spot for "night soil". By the late 1700's the square was
surrounded by brickyards because the areas clay terrain proved better suited for
kilns than for crops. In 1825 the square was renamed in honor of David
Rittenhouse, a brilliant Philadelphian astronomer, instrument maker and
patriotic leader of the Revolutionary era.
By the 1850's a building boom began, and in the second half of the 19th
century the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood became the most fashionable
residential section of the city, the home of Philadelphia's "Victorian
aristocracy." Some of the mansions of that period still survive on the streets
facing the square, although most of the grand homes gave way to apartment
buildings after 1913.
 Paul Cret's Design: Rittenhouse
Square was enclosed by a fence in 1816 when local residents loaned funds to the
city for that purpose. In the decade before the Civil War, the Square boasted
not only trees and walkways, but also fountains donated by local benefactors -
prematurely, it turned out, for the fountains created so much mud that City
Council ordered them removed. The square's present layout dates from 1913, when
the newly formed Rittenhouse Square Improvement Association helped to fund a
redesign by Paul Philippe Cret, a French-born architect who contributed to the
design of the Parkway and the Rodin Museum. Although some changes have been made
since then, the square still reflects Cret's original plan.
 The main walkways are diagonal ones that begin at the corners and meet at an
oval in the center. The plaza, which contains a large planter bed and a
reflecting pool, is surround by a balustrade and ringed by a circular walk.
Classical urns, many of them bearing relief figures of ancient Greeks, rest on
pedestals at the entrances and elsewhere through the square. Ornamental
lampposts contribute to the air of old-fashion gentility. A low fence surrounds
the square, and balustrades adorn the corner entrances. Many trees - oaks,
maples, locusts, plane trees, and others - stand within and around the
enclosure, and the flowerbeds and blooming shrubs add splashed of color in
season.
Rittenhouse Square is the site of annual flower markets and outdoor at
exhibitions. More than any of the other squares, it also functions as a
neighborhood park. Office workers stop by to eat their lunch on the benches;
parents bring children to play; and many people stroll through to admire the
plants, sculptures, or the fat and saucy squirrels.
 Sculptures in the Square: Like Logan Square, Rittenhouse has become the
setting for a number of the city's best-loved outdoor sculptures. The central
plaza holds the dramatic Lion Crushing a Serpent by the French Romantic sculptor
Antoine-Louis Barye. Originally created in 1832, the work is Barye's allegory of
the French Revolution of 1830, symbolizing the power of good (the lion)
conquering evil (the serpent). This bronze cast was made about 1890. At the
other end of the central plaza, within the reflecting pool, is Paul Manship's
Duck Girl of 1911, a lyrical bronze of a young girl carrying a duck under one
arm - an early work by the same sculptor who designed the Aero Memorial for
Logan Square. A favorite of the children, is Albert Laessle's Billy, a
two-foot-high bronze billy goat in a small plaza halfway down the southwest
walk. Bill's head, horns, and spine have been worn to a shiny gold color by
countless admirers. In a similar plaza in the northeast walkway stand the Evelyn
Taylor Price Memorial Sundial, a sculpture of two cheerful, naked children who
hold aloft a sundial in the form of a giant sunflower head. Created by
Philadelphia artist Beatirce Fenton, the sundial memorializes a woman who served
as the president of the Rittenhouse Square Improvement Association and
Rittenhouse Square Flower Association. In the flower bed between the sundial and
the central plaza in Cornelia Van A. Chapin's Giant Frog, a large and sleek
granite amphibian that parents point out to their toddlers. Continuing the
animal theme, two small stone dogs, added in 1988, perch on the balustrades at
the southwest corner entrance.
|
