Event Category: Fall Speaker Series

Brent Leggs is the eleventh President and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and has served in the role since 2026. Brent has been with the National Trust for over twenty years, most recently as the founding executive director of its African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, which has raised over $200 million for

Migration to Philadelphia has produced iconic neighborhoods, commercial corridors, and monuments in various parts of our city and region, at different points in history. This talk will explore the formation, evolution, and preservation of places from Center City to South, Southwest, and other parts of Philadelphia, tracing the impacts of migrant communities on the city

To help reduce the massive debt incurred during the French and Indian War, Parliament passed The Stamp Act in March of 1765. The North American colonies immediately protested through pamphlets, newspaper editorials, political cartoons, intimidation of tax collectors, and economic protest. Recognizing the negative economic impact of the resulting American Non-Importation agreements, Parliament repealed the

In the 1930s, a nationwide push to modernize main street store facades was begun, encouraged by New Deal policies and the emerging popularity of streamline modern design. When the economy exploded after WWII, this design trickle led to a torrent of storefront modernization. Striking storefronts were constructed in every corner of mid-century Philadelphia, largely designed by

In the 2000s and 2010s, Hyman Myers and Bruce Laverty began to record oral history interviews with senior design professionals who lived or worked in the Greater Philadelphia region. Myers was then nearing retirement from the VITETTA Group and UPenn’s Architecture Department. Laverty was the Gladys Brooks Curator of Architecture at The Athenaeum of Philadelphia.

We have more than enough buildings. Instead of wasting natural resources we cannot replenish and polluting our environment even further with new construction, we should reuse, rethink, and reimagine what we already have. We should do such in a manner that opens up existing structures for all of us and allows us to understand where

The preservation movement has done more to determine the shape of American cities than nearly anything else in the last half century. But it is increasingly contributing to a crippling inertia, focusing too narrowly on bricks and mortar, divorcing itself from a broad public that has other priorities and needs–other things it wishes to preserve.

This presentation explores the enduring presence and living traditions of the Lenape people, emphasizing the deep cultural connections that have withstood centuries of displacement, disruption, and change. Highlighting stories of survival, adaptation, and revitalization, it traces the continuity of Lenape language, ceremonies, values, and community ties from ancestral homelands in the East to present-day Lenape

presented by Inga Saffron Philadelphia, like other big American cities, was once home to dozens of print newspapers. These papers exhibited a strong pack mentality (much like journalists themselves), and set up their offices in close proximity to one another, often on the same block, forming distinct media enclaves or newspaper rows. Other industries –

presented by David Brownlee, Ph.D., FSAH Horace Trumbauer of Philadelphia was the most enigmatic architect of America’s “Gilded Age.” Although he left school when he was 14, by the time he was thirty, he had built palatial homes for some of the nation’s wealthiest families, and his office would produce more than 800 designs over