ABSTRACT
Philadelphia, like Boston, was a hotbed of invention and improvisation beginning with that Bostonian transplant, Benjamin Franklin. During the beginning of Frank Furness's career, Philadelphia was embarking on a renaissance occasioned by the end of the Civil War. Furness's Guarantee Trust and Safe Deposit Company of 1875 foreshadowed his Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts five years later, while in his Penn National Bank, the main banking space could be seen as a precursor of Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin Building. Frank Furness's Fisher Library at Penn can be viewed as a precursor of Louis I. Kahn with its incredible scaled arched windows. His use of rusticated stone at the base of the building seems to reflect back to H. H. Richardson. While Furness's architecture is peculiarly American and nothing like it has ever been seen again, a generation of architects throughout the country was inspired by his genius.
