The home and studio of architect Frank Weise at 307 S. Chadwick Street is currently on the market for $3.3 million. | Photo: Michael Bixler

For 45 years a former stable tucked away on a small side street in Rittenhouse Square was a frequently evolving project of modernist architect Frank Weise. Today, the building is being sold for $3.3 million.

307 S. Chadwick Street was originally built as a carriage house around 1895. It was purchased by Weise in 1958. The architect began designing the building’s renovation in 1960, reworking plans until construction began six years later. Year-by-year drawings, now housed within the Frank Weise Collection of the Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania, show the evolution, with the resulting design moving away from pure Modernist styles to incorporating historic features. “I lived in the area for a long time,” recalled Franz Rabauer, the building’s listing agent. “It was always such a treat to walk by and see something unique like that.”

The front facade has three different treatments: an open first level, stacked brick arches in the middle and topped with a metal clad mansard roof on the top three floors that feature large round and trapezoidal openings. “The residence occupies the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors under the mansard roof,” explained Rabauer. “The studio was on the first, second, and third floors.”

Frank Weise in his studio on Chadwick Street circa 1960s. | Photo courtesy of the Frank Weise Collection of the Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania

Weise was born in Brooklyn, New York and moved with his family to Philadelphia, where he attended Simon Gratz High School and subsequently earned a Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1942. He then worked for a short time in the offices of renowned architects Louis I. Kahn and George Howe. Weise went on to complete a masters degree at Harvard in 1945, studying under Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. He later attended Black Mountain College in Western North Carolina. Weise established his own architectural firm in Philadelphia in 1949.

Weise’s portfolio of work in the Philadelphia region remains remarkably extant. Between 1949 and 1962, he completed around 30 single family residential commissions. In Philadelphia, they range from rowhouses in Washington Square West to single family detached homes in Roxborough and Wynnefield. His work in the suburbs included projects on the Main Line, Delaware and Bucks Counties, and Collingswood, New Jersey.

In the 1960s, Weise worked on two distinctive developments: Washington Mews around 11th and Lombard Streets, and Camac Village along the 1200 blocks of Lombard and Pine Streets and the 400 block of S. Camac Street. One of his few nonresidential projects is the District Health Center #6 at Girard Avenue and N. 4th Street.

The studio, living area, and foyer of 307 S. Chadwick Street. | Photos: Michael Bixler

Weise is also remembered for his contributions in the 1970s to the renovation of Society Hill’s Head House Square and the restoration of Eastern State Penitentiary in the 1980s. He was a founding member of the Wilma Theater and the Theater of the Living Arts and designed the 1965 renovations of the latter.

Today, as the I-95 cap project is proceeding with the aim to reunite Old City and Society Hill with the Delaware River waterfront, it revives an idea Weise had advocated for in the 1960s, when Philadelphia’s span of the highway was being built. As a result of his efforts at that time, a portion, the Vine Street Expressway, was built below street level.

After Weise’s death in 2003, his house and studio was inherited by his daughter who, for a time, maintained a design firm in the studio portion. Until recently, another firm occupied the space. The property is zoned RSA-5 Residential Single Family Attached. The total square footage is nearly 4,000, although officially it is listed as smaller. “When measuring square footage, areas under the roof don’t count towards the total. That’s the residential portion,” said Rabauer.

In 1983, 307 S. Chadwick Street was listed within the boundary of the Rittenhouse/Fitler Residential Historic District by the National Register of Historic Places, but classified as an “intrusion” or non-contributing building. In 1995, the Philadelphia Historical Commission likewise labeled it as non-contributing to the historic district, although all of the other converted and altered carriage houses on the block were designated as contributing. In 2023, the architect’s studio and home at 307 S. Chadwick Street was nominated by the staff of the Historical Commission and added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places.