Home Philadelphia The Bellevue Historian in Residence: DesignPhiladelphia Special Edition

The Bellevue Historian in Residence: DesignPhiladelphia Special Edition

What does the Bellevue tell us about Philadelphia’s rich design and architectural history? Join David Kurlander, the Bellevue’s Historian-in-Residence, on a walking tour of the legendary Broad Street building that has been so central to revolutions in Philadelphia’s built environment. Learn about the Hewitt brothers, the prolific Gilded Age architects who designed the Bellevue. Discuss the legendary thinkers who walked the Bellevue’s halls, with a special emphasis on the 1961 American Institute of Architects convention, at which Le Corbusier received the AIA Gold Medal and I.M. Pei described his vision for Society Hill Towers.

Explore how successive generations of preservation architects and interior designers updated the Bellevue to meet stylistic and economic shifts. And track Philadelphia’s broader transformation through the lens of the Grand Old Lady of Broad Street. These historical tales provide an inspirational blueprint for adaptive reuse, hotel design, and city planning discourses far beyond Philadelphia, and this tour promises to be a spirited discussion about how the past can inform our complicated present.

Historian In Residence, David Kurlander Solid coral color block used as a background element in the design.

HOW IT WORKS

The Bellevue will offer a complimentary historian tour available for DesignPhiladelphia attendees.

  • Duration: 75 minute tour

Additional: Guests receive a custom-printed map and can choose from themed tours (architecture, sports, culinary or general history), offering something for everyone looking to connect more deeply with Philadelphia’s storied past.

Lobby-Entrance---1950s---Library-of-Congress
HISTORIAN
David Kurlander
David Kurlander is a historian currently working on a book about the history of The Bellevue. Before his move to Philadelphia last year, he spent five years at CAFE, part of Vox Media, where he was a producer on the Stay Tuned with Preet interview podcast for former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and the Now & Then podcast with historians Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman. Kurlander was the lead editorial producer for Now & Then, which explored diverse historical elements of the contemporary American political scene, with topics as diverse as lesser-known Constitutional amendments, pets, board games, and space travel.  Kurlander studied History & Literature at Harvard, where he focused primarily on 1970s corporate and cultural history. His thesis, Capture the Rapture: A Cultural History of Malt Liquor, 1950-1980, won the Edwin Chandler Cumming Prize for Thesis of Highest Distinction in History and Literature and inspired him to pursue a broader career in telling 20th century American stories.  Kurlander lives with his wife Zara in Society Hill, where he collects his weekly findings about Philadelphia's rich history in the Substack newsletter Archiveadelphia.

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