Alumni Auditorium

Colleges & Universities University of Pennsylvania
1

<p>Think what you want, I like to look through old pictures of Penn on the University Archive’s online collection.</p>

<p>Apparently, Frank Furness (the guy who designed Fisher) drew up plans for an auditorium to go where Meyerson is now.</p>

<p>Anyone know anything about it? Looks pretty nice to me. Don’t know why they didn’t go forward with it.</p>

<p><a href=“http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/d/archives/20090227008[/url]”>http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/d/archives/20090227008&lt;/a&gt;
[University</a> of Pennsylvania campus plan (as proposed by Furness, Evans and Co., Architects), pen and ink site plan](<a href=“http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/d/archives/20090303003]University”>http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/d/archives/20090303003)</p>

2

<p>Instead, they ended up building Irvine–not a bad alternative.</p>

<p>Try setting the zoom on that elevation to “full” (above the photo). Amazing drawing–those guys were true artists. Not like today’s AutoCad. On the other hand, they couldn’t generate the photo-realistic renderings architects can produce today. Still, you gotta appreciate the artistry required of architectural firms back then.</p>