VAF 2019 Annual Meeting: Landscapes of Succession

VAF Philadelphia 2019 Conference

Wednesday, May 29^th- Opening Reception & Awards

All Wednesday evening events will be held at Meyerson Hall, School of Design, University of Pennsylvania.

8:30 am - 4:00 pm  Board Meeting, Architectural Archive, University of Pennsylvania.

12:30 - 6:00 pm   Registration, Homewood Suites Conference Hotel, 4109 Walnut Street.

4:30 - 5:30 pm  Opening Reception, Meyerson Hall, School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. South 34th Street.       

5:30 - 7:00 pm Welcome: Aaron Wunsch

Keynote: Kenneth Finkel, Professor of History, Temple University

                                Presentation of VAF Awards

Dinner on your own

Thursday, May 30^thPeriphery Tours (by bus)

Includes Lunch and Evening Reception.

Departure times from Homewood Suites (4109 Walnut Street) load between 7:45 and 9:00 am. 

Registrants will be notified of departure time at registration (buses will be staggered from 8-9 am).

6:00 – 9:30 am  Registration, Homewood Suites Conference Hotel, 4109 Walnut Street.

8:00 am Northwest Tour (Germantown) 

8:15 am Southwest Tour (Darby)

8:30 am Northwest Tour (Germantown) 

8:45 am Northeast Tour (Tacony)

9:00 am Northwest Tour (Germantown) 

6:30 – 8:30 pm    The Woodlands Tour and Reception (included in tour price)

All tour buses will end at Woodlands.  Buses will depart in waves, although the Homewood Suites are only 0.9 miles from the Woodlands.

Dinner on your own.

Friday, May 31^st - Center City Walking Tours (self-guided)

All meals on your own.

8:00  – 10:00 am  Registration, Homewood Suites Conference Hotel, 4109 Walnut Street.

9:00 am – 1:00 pm  Morning Self-Guided Walking Tour: Town House & Row House

1:00  – 5:00 pm Afternoon Self-Guided Walking Tours:

• Elfreth's Alley Open House
• Early Central Business District
• Society Hill Open House
• W.E.B. DuBois' Seventh Ward

Dinner on your own

Saturday, June 1st - Paper Sessions, Book Exhibits, and Banquet

All Saturday events, including registration will be held in Houston Hall, University of Pennsylvania, 3417 Spruce Street.

7:00 am – 3:00 pm  Registration, Houston Hall

7:30 am – 5:00 pm  Book Exhibits

8:00  – 9:30 am Paper Session I

10:00  – 11:30 am     Paper Session II

11:30 am – 1:00 pm Lunch Roundtable (bring your own lunch) OR Lunch on your own

1:00 – 2:30 pm Paper Session III

3:00  – 4:30 pm Paper Session IV

6:00  – 10:00 pm Annual Meeting & Banquet

Sunday, June 2nd - Post-Conference Tours

Please note:  The Sunday Tour is organized by Liz Jarvis and Emily Cooperman, who have a excellent track-records of offering architecturally-focused tours that also address the cultural landscape of the areas covered. A small guide brochure will be provided for the Chestnut Hill tour. 

Tour 1: Chestnut Hill: Village to Garden Community to Architectural Excellence

Includes guide brochure, lunch and transportation.

Organized by Liz Jarvis and Emily Cooperman

Tour Capped at 35

9:00 am – 4:30 pm  Chestnut Hill

Description: Chestnut Hill is most recognized and visited by those interested in the built environment as the location of Robert Venturi's seminal house for his mother Vanna. What is less known is that this house both exists in and responds to an area of Philadelphia that had developed its own distinctive patterns of scale, materials, and organization that originated in the late seventeenth century, succeeded by initial community development in the eighteenth century as a gateway and crossroads. These patterns were then followed by two important periods of nineteenth-century development which introduced the work of the city's architects and earliest planners, taking advantage of two new railroad lines, one created at mid-century and the other in the 1880s, to establish a summer resort and commuter suburb that mixed larger, free-standing houses with smaller double and row residences. In the early twentieth century, the work of the city's best architects and planners added to this already remarkable ensemble of mixture of scales woven together by common landscape elements. The area has continued to attract a high quality of new design to the present.

This tour will combine travel by bus to gain an understanding of some of the larger patterns and notable houses in Chestnut Hill such as Wison Eyre's Anglecot, with visits to a group of individual houses, including the Vanna Venturi house and Louis Kahn's Margaret Esherick House, and representative examples from the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, including the work of Samuel Sloan, G. W. and W. D. Hewitt, and Robert R. McGoodwin. A catered lunch will be provided in one of these houses.

Register here on the alacarte registration form.