To those who knew him, Aaron Wunsch was both an intellectual and an adventurer. He was a man equally within his element inside the confines of his classroom–conversing with a generation of students on the ins and outs of historic preservation–as he was outside, traipsing around Philadelphia to hammer tarps and tin onto the roofs of historic buildings he simply could not stand to see decay.

Now, friends, colleagues, and the city’s historic buildings will somehow have to do without him. Wunsch passed away at his home in Germantown on Friday, September 20, at age 53 after a years-long fight with cancer. The details of his illness, death, and indeed much of his life are most eloquently rendered in a journal Wunsch’s wife, Jillian Galle, thoughtfully maintained for friends and family throughout his journey. More meaningful words cannot be written than those found there.

However, Hidden City would be remiss without honoring the legacy of a giant of Philadelphia’s preservation community, who indeed supported and believed in the importance of this publication since its infancy. “The thing that stood out to me about Aaron,” said Peter Woodall, project director of Hidden City, “is that he was an academic who was also a fighter: against developers and, at various times, the Historical Commission, the Preservation Alliance, and the University of Pennsylvania itself, even though he taught there and, later, was in the process of seeking tenure. He was involved with the life of the city in so many different ways. Aaron was about as far from being a resident of the ivory tower as can be imagined,” Woodall said.

We asked some of his students, friends, and colleagues to help us further remember Wunsch.

Students Recall a Brilliant, Passionate Professor

When Molly Lester arrived on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in 2010 to pursue a masters degree in historic preservation, she drew Wunsch as a professor. It was the start of a relationship that would extend to thesis advisor, friend, and colleague. Lester now serves as associate director of Penn’s Urban Heritage Project.

One of the things she discovered early on was just what kind of a mind Wunsch possessed– and how forcefully he could apply it. “I’m sure you’ll hear this from a lot of people. The man had the most encyclopedic knowledge about architecture, but then also about sources related to architecture,” Lester said, laughing as she recalled an 11th hour suggestion for her thesis. “My deadline was the next day, and he still had brainstorms for sources I should be checking.”

This obstinacy is something others in Wunsch’s sphere also recall, but Lester said any friction from his intellectual convictions were mollified by his heart. She called him a ceaseless “cheerleader” of her work and career, starting with her selection of Minerva Parker Nichols, the first American woman to operate her own independent architectural practice, as her thesis topic. Lester said Wunsch actually didn’t know much about Nichols at first, which is why he insisted on pursuing sourcing as rigorously as possible. “He at one point, later in the process, said there’s probably an article in this or a book,” she said. “That was the first time that it occurred to me and really planted a seed.” Lester has since published several articles and co-authored a book on Nichols, as well as organized exhibits, all with Wunsch’s continued support and advice.

Anthony Hita enrolled in Penn’s preservation program in 2016 and, despite his role as a student, quickly struck up a collegial relationship with Wunsch, who he recalled for his passion and respectful demeanor. Hita came to preservation as a second career after serving as a pastor in the United Methodist Church. He was among the oldest students in his cohort, but Hita’s friendship with Wunsch helped put him at ease. “He and I would just talk. He worked a lot with churches and would often bounce ideas off of me,” Hita said. “In some ways I almost felt like I was his pastor. He was teaching me, but I was giving him an ear to express frustrations.”

Wunsch’s mentorship led to success for Hita in more ways than one. While enrolled in Wunsch’s class on historic documentation, Hita was assigned the First Baptist Church of Germantown, now referred to as Polite Temple Baptist Church, an 1852 church designed by Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan. As Hita was wrapping up his degree, he said Wunsch also nominated him to serve as an ambassador for the annual Vernacular Architecture Forum. After graduation, Hita took such an interest in the Germantown church that he worked with Wunsch on its successful inclusion to the National Register of Historic Places. Hita  added that he will “forever be grateful” for the influence Wunsch had on his life.

A Close Colleague Reflects on Friendship, Legacy

Frank Matero, Gonick Family Professor and chair of the Historic Preservation Department at Penn, remembers first seeing Wunsch when the latter gave “one of the great talks” at a conference on the history of the American cemetery hosted by Penn. A few years later, Matero created his first faculty position as chair in architectural history and filled it with his first hire: Wunsch. Matero said on a personal level he felt a kinship with Wunsch because of their shared academic eccentricities. “As you can imagine, there also aren’t too many people around that can have conversations about gravestones and cemeteries,” Matero said, noting Wunsch authored two books on the subject.

In addition to their love of architecture and history, the two would travel to attend rare book fairs and also had a habit of investigating the diviest bars they could find, often at Wunsch’s insistence on exploring the local fare.

His passion for busting out of the ivory tower also manifested professionally, as Wunsch revolutionized the department into one focused on public history, which, as Matero explains, calls for valuing the input of the greater public in determining which buildings and landscapes are worthy of preservation, as opposed to defaulting to the professional architects and historians who dominated the early movement. In practice, that meant Wunsch professed, both literally and figuratively, applying scholarly principles outside of the classroom. “He was a public intellectual. He really believed that what you do as a scholar needs to find its way into advocacy for whatever cause it was you believed in,” explained Matero. “He really brought a whole new dimension to the program.”

In practice, that also meant bumping up against counter forces. “It put him into conflict with a lot of people. I’ve always said, he’s a friend, a colleague, and a pain in the ass,” Matero said, laughing. “He just had very high principles, and he didn’t like to compromise.” Indeed, in another journal entry Galle recorded that Wunsch had summoned the energy to joke that a regular nemesis to his preservation efforts, historian George Thomas, had not “killed me yet!”

Like others, Matero said that Wunsch’s at-times demanding exterior rested on a foundation of selflessness. He estimated Wunsch taught as many as 600 students during his tenure at Penn, perhaps 150 as thesis advisor, and invested “enormous amounts of time” in getting his charges to enjoy and excel in preservation.

A 19th Century Man

Jeffrey A. Cohen, the Term Professor in Growth and Structure of Cities at Bryn Mawr College and a member of the Philadelphia Historic Commission’s Committee on Historic Designation, noted that Wunsch’s scholarship focused on “mid-19th century designed landscapes” such as cemeteries, parks, and planned suburbs. “[He delved] deep into the documentation and intentions that shaped these very intentional new places and situated them richly within the larger scope of American cultural history,” Cohen explained.

Cohen also witnessed Wunsch’s spirit of can-do-ism in protecting spaces firsthand. After initially getting to know each other when Wunsch worked for the National Park Service’s Historic American Buildings Survey, the two would meet up at VAF meetings and helped plan the Philadelphia conference in 2019. Yet, it was impromptu projects and forays that Cohen particularly valued, often with “our erstwhile co-conspirator” archivist Sandra Markham. “With her we embarked on seat-of-pants jaunts, whose climax could have been captured in an action-shot depicting an extended staring-contest with a building, venturing readings of its form, design conversants, setting, and authorship–sometimes until the owner came out to invite us in or to shoo us away,” Cohen recalled.

Appreciation for Wunsch’s escapades also extended beyond academia. Yvonne Haskins, an attorney and community activist in Northwest Philadelphia, recalled working closely with Wunsch to preserve the Germantown Boys and Girls Club, built in 1898, after a highly-controversial demolition plan surfaced about a decade ago. Eventually, the efforts, also championed by architectural historian Oscar Beisert and Penn archivist J.M. Duffin, resulted in a successful compromise that led to an award-winning adaptive restoration of the building.

Haskins said Wunsch appeared with her publicly at Historical Commission meetings to advocate for the building and also met privately to strategize, even as powerful forces arrayed against the building, including David L. Cohen, a former Comcast executive, Mayor Ed Rendell Chief of Staff, and Penn trustee. “Cohen, who was with Comcast at the time, wanted to put a hockey rink on the site, on this tiny little street,” Haskins said. “But we won that battle.”

What stuck out most to Haskins was Wunsch’s intelligence, eloquence, and passion. Elsewhere in Germantown, Haskins recalled Wunsch and another gentleman taking it upon themselves to climb atop dilapidated Germantown Settlement buildings to nail tarps onto their roofs and protect them from negligent ownership. Many have since been obtained by the city and are heading for redevelopment.

Haskins said there was more that she and Wunsch wanted to accomplish, but during their last meeting in 2022 it became clear there just wouldn’t be time. “The last time we were together, I went over and visited him,” said Haskins. “We had tea for about three hours. I remember he said to me he felt great, and that he didn’t know how it had happened, but he was getting prepared to die.”

Spiritual Preservation

While Wunsch’s spirit has now departed its earthly confines, Matero believes his greatest professional legacy will endure within the brick-and-mortar of Philadelphia’s religious institutions: the historic churches and synagogues for which he endeavored to “move the needle for their public awareness and preservation,” he said.

Along with Polite Baptist, churches including Germantown’s Mount Vernon Baptist Church, Trinity Lutheran Church, the Church of the Atonement in Kingsessing, and 19th Street Baptist Church in Point Breeze all benefited from his advocacy.

Matero noted that Wunsch’s familial background was “half-Quaker, half-Jewish,” but that Wunsch himself was not particularly religious. Why then, did so much of his work focus on historic religious buildings in Philadelphia? Matero again pegs it to Wunsch’s love for 19th century architecture. “Aaron was all about the 19th century and churches and other religious institutions in this country that really had their heyday in the 1800s,” Matero explained. “So, for him, they were the quintessential architecture of the period.”

Thaddeus Squire, a philanthropic management professional and chief commons steward for preservation nonprofit CERT, said Wunsch’s work was instrumental to that organization’s efforts to preserve buildings such as 19th Street Baptist Church, Mount Vernon Cemetery, and two 18th century houses in West Philadelphia. “CERT is really a collection of Aaron Wunsch projects,” he said.

Often, Squire explained, Wunsch would identify a building or place in need of saving and approach him to help identify philanthropic opportunities or other means of doing so. Yet, Wunsch would also advocate publicly, becoming a key figure in pushing back against city political and power structures, Squire said, that dismiss preservation as frivolous. “It’s a loss for the community. He was kind of the rabblerouser and good trouble raiser in historic preservation in Philly,” said Squire.

All else failing, Squire also witnessed Wunsch as a man ready to roll up his sleeves and do the work himself. Perhaps nowhere was that more evident than at 19th Street Baptist Church, where Wunsch helped organize a “massive student initiative” about 15 years ago to help analyze and stabilize the 19th century church, Squire recalled. Photos from a contemporaneous WHYY article depict Wunsch donning a hardhat atop a ladder in the church’s sanctuary, where he was part of a hodgepodge team making emergency roof repairs. “He was constantly fixing holes and doing things that were quite dangerous, actually,” Matero said. “He really put himself at risk.”

In a cosmic coincidence that would make even the most skeptical stop and wonder, several of Wunsch’s contacts noted that as word spread he had entered hospice in recent weeks, so too did news emerge that 19th Street Baptist Church, a building Wunsch had long fought for, would likely be heading for demolition after a protracted battle. “Sometimes things may not be intended, but they rhyme,” said Hita, the former pastor. “It felt like the end of a season that was going with the end of his seasons as well.”

The loss of such buildings that Wunsch and his colleagues, despite their best efforts, failed to save appears to have stayed with him until the end. In another journal entry, Galle wrote that he became distressed upon counting on his fingers a number of recently demolished churches. It was only after reminding him of his preservation successes, fortified by the well wishes of all those who knew him, that he was soothed.

Now it is for the rest of us to try and find solace in Wunsch’s successes, soothed by the continued existence of the places he fought for, and motivated by his memory to save the next ones.

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Editor’s Note: Hidden City recognizes that Aaron Wunsch’s circle of admirers is vast. While we were only able to contact and include a few of those confidants in this piece, we were amazed by and encouraged those who have not done so to take in the scores of incredible memories and photographs posted lovingly by Aaron’s friends and family on KudoBoard.

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