The Curtis Center corner of 6th and Walnut
Streets
Philadelphia
Originally built as the
headquarters of the Curtis Publishing
Company (which published, among others,
the magazines Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, and Jack
& Jill), the Curtis Center underwent a major
renovation in the mid-1980s and is now a
well-regarded Center City office
building. Its location, bordered both by
Washington Square Park and Independence
Mall, and its light-filled 12-story
central courtyard make it a pleasant
place to work.
But the
building's real attraction is the beautiful glass mosaic in
the lobby called "Dream
Garden." This fabulous artwork was
designed by Maxfield Parrish and executed
by Louis Comfort Tiffany. The mosaic is
said to be made of 100,000 pieces in
260 colors.
For many
years, the mosaic was one of
Philadelphia's hidden treasures, viewed
by few other than the office workers in
the building that houses it. Then it made
the news in the late 1990's when Steven
A. Wynn tried to buy it for one of his
Las Vegas casinos. A major brouhaha
ensued with the result that the Pew
Charitable Trusts donated funds so that
the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts could purchase it
and keep it at the Curtis Center.
(Incidentally, Pew also stepped in to
keep the Thomas Eakins painting "The
Gross Clinic" in Philadelphia.)
