James

A few years ago, they restored the place–sort of, if restoring means picking out classic moldings in vibrant pastels–but 25 years ago, in a heavier-handed renovation, a lot of Trumbauer’s original details were scrapped, & I was there at just the right time to rescue cast-bronze door fittings, silver-plated sconces and a carved walnut Louis XIV-style console that had been been banished to the head housekeeper’s room since the 195Os. I’d been in plenty of good-looking buildings before I went to college, but four years of daily wandering through the hotel–OK, sneaking, since employees were supposed to be out the door five minutes after we punched out on the time clock, and I often stayed an hour or more after that, to silently steal through the Pere’s handsome public rooms & down its broad, silent corridors–taught me more about scale, proportion & rhythm than I ever learned from any architecture book, and after looking up Trumbauer’s other works in the dusty bound volumes of American Architect & Architectural Record in the campus library, I always intended to hitchhike out east over the summer break to see firsthand what was left of Whitemarsh Hall, but I never made it. Outside of NY & Philadelphia, Trumbauer seems to be pretty much unknown, but as far as architecture & beautiful buildings go, he’s my hero. Magnaverde.