Electrifying Philadelphia: Pageantry, Progress, and Power in the City Beautiful

Time: 5:30-7:00pm, with members' reception to follow

Location: Wagner Free Institute of Science, 1700 West Montgomery Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19121

Home to Ben Franklin and the site of an innovative Edison plant, Philadelphia has long been in love with electricity. This talk will provide an overview of the city's electrification - its advent, advertising, and spread to institutions like the Wagner in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Looking at City Hall, the Sesquicentennial, and promotional “home electrics,” Aaron Wunsch will examine a moment in history that owes as much to Barnum as it does to Franklin.

Dr. Aaron Wunsch is a Lecturer in Penn’s Graduate Program in Historic Preservation. He holds a doctorate in Architectural History from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on nineteenth-century American architecture and urbanism. His master’s thesis focused on the architecture of the American electric power industry and he continued that work as part of a study of the Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) for the Historic American Buildings Survey.

This lecture program is funded by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Heritage Philadelphia Program.