About Collections  MUSEUM HISTORY Your Gateway into Philadelphia’s Past! The Building & Museum Founded in 1938 and opened to the public in 1941, the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent is the city history museum of Philadelphia. The Museum is housed in an elegant Greek-Revival structure, which served as the home of the Franklin Institute from 1826 to 1933 (see below). It was designed by John Haviland, one of the country’s foremost architects (his work in Philadelphia includes the University of the Arts’ Hamilton Hall at Broad and Pine streets and the imposing Eastern State Penitentiary in the city’s Fairmount section). Haviland’s largely unchanged façade was loosely based upon drawings of an ancient Greek monument. It features marble stairs flanked by faux-grained cast iron lamps approaching an inviting main entrance set in a marble surround. The structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. With the building unused after the Franklin Institute moved to its present-day home on the Ben Franklin Parkway, the Philadelphia City Planning Commission considered demolishing the structure to make way for a parking lot. Henry Ford, the automobile manufacturer, offered to move the façade to his museum, Greenfield Village, near Detroit, Michigan. Hoping to save the historic building, newly elected Mayor S. Davis Wilson and Frances Wistar, president of the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks, reached out to inventor and radio pioneer A. Atwater Kent. In 1938, Kent purchased the site and gave it to the city with the stipulation that it house a museum named after him dedicated to the history of Philadelphia. The Atwater Kent Museum was formally dedicated on April 19, 1941. Renamed the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent in 2010, the museum holds a collection of Philadelphia history composed of over 100,000 objects. The museum closed between 2009 and 2012 for major renovations and fully reopened in September 2012. The Legacy The Franklin Institute, which occupied the Philadelphia History Museum building from 1826 to 1933, was founded by Samuel Vaughn Merrick in 1823 as a school for “mechanics” (“engineers” in today’s parlance). While at its original location, the Franklin Institute became one of the leading research and teaching facilities for science and industry in the United States. It helped establish one of the first government-funded weather observing networks in 1837. In the early 1900s the building hosted the first public demonstrations of the transcontinental telephone and of Eastman Kodak’s color motion pictures. In 1933, the institute left the building for its present-day home on the Ben Franklin Parkway. A. Atwater Kent & Atwater Kent Manufacturing Company Born in Vermont in 1873, A. Atwater Kent dropped out of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts in 1896 to start a business in his father’s machine shop manufacturing and selling small electrical items. Relocated in 1902 to a rented loft at 48 North Sixth Street, not far from the Philadelphia History Museum’s current location, the Atwater Kent Manufacturing Works scored its first major success with the Unisparker, an ignition system for automobiles that quickly became the industry standard. By the late 1910s the company —sited at a larger facility on Stenton Avenue in Germantown, Philadelphia — focused on electrical parts for automobiles, although government contracts in World War I saw it expand production into optical gun sights and fuse setters. After it received an order for 10,000 headsets in 1921, the company capitalized on a growing market for radios, retooling its operations to produce radio components and then complete sets. By 1925 the Atwater Kent Manufacturing Company was the largest maker of radios in the nation, employing 12,000 people manufacturing nearly one million radio sets at its peak in 1929. Its $2 million plant on Wissahickon Avenue was an architectural sensation, receiving hundreds of visitors annually and eventually covering over 30 acres. The popular “Atwater Kent Hour,” a nationwide broadcast featuring the top entertainers of the time, was one of the most listened to and acclaimed radio programs of the 1920s. The Great Depression hit the company hard, the average cost of a radio falling from $128 in 1929 to $78 in 1931, and consumers favored lesser priced models made by competitors. Faced with declining sales, the Atwater Kent Manufacturing Company closed in 1936. By the time of his death in 1949, A. Atwater Kent held 93 patents for improvements in automobile ignition systems and electronics. He was married to Mabel Lucas Kent, with whom he had had four children. Their oldest son, A. Atwater Kent, Jr., served as president of the Atwater Kent Museum Board of Trustees from 1938 to 1983. His son, A. Atwater Kent III, continues as a member of the Board of Trustees. IN THIS SECTION About Museum History News & Press Room Board of Directors Philadelphia History Museum 267.314.7059 info@philadelphiahistory.org Copyright © 2021, Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent. All rights reserved. Website developed by Zero Defect Design LLC. 267.314.7059 email info_outline