The City of Philadelphia closed the Philadelphia History Museum at Atwater Kent in 2018. 15-17 S. 7th Street has been sitting vacant and neglected with no plan for reuse in place for eight years. | Photo: Michael Bixler
Alarm bells are being sounded for the deteriorating condition of a historic building adjacent to Independence Mall. Shuttered since 2018, the former home of the Atwater Kent Museum, later known as the Philadelphia History Museum, has racked up multiple violations issued by the Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I) for problems with its fire protection systems, roof drainage, and exterior trash and graffiti.
15-17 S. 7th Street is owned by the City of Philadelphia. In July, eight leaders of Philadelphia historical and cultural organizations delivered a letter to Mayor Cherelle Parker expressing concern over the state of the building. “It’s a shame that a city that supposedly values its history is letting languish a historic building they own, by an important architect, a block and a half from Independence Hall,” said Paul Steinke, executive director of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia and a signer of the letter.
Along with the Preservation Alliance, the letter was signed by leaders from the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, Design Advocacy Group, Mother Bethel AME Church, Arch Street Meeting House Preservation Trust, The Athenaeum of Philadelphia, Carpenters’ Company of Philadelphia, and Historic Philadelphia, Inc.
The Greek Revival building was the original home of the Franklin Institute. It was designed in 1824 by John Haviland, whose other buildings include Eastern State Penitentiary, the Walnut Street Theater, and the Village of Industry & Art, formerly Dorrance Hamilton Hall and originally the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. It was added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places in 1956 and the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The former Franklin Institute at 15 S. 7th Street was completed in 1826 and designed by John Haviland. The Atwater Kent Museum took over the building in 1941. | Photo: Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress
After occupying the building for over 100 years, the Franklin Institute moved to its current location on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in 1934. Inventor and radio entrepreneur Atwater Kent purchased the 7th Street property and gave it to the City to create a museum dedicated to Philadelphia history.
The gift had a caveat, however. The deed, dated July 28, 1938, stipulated that “the building shall forever hereafter be known and designated as ‘Atwater Kent Museum,’” and that if the City closed the building to the public, the trustees of the Atwater Kent Foundation may request the return of the building to them.
Nevertheless, the City closed the museum in 2018 and received permission from the Orphans Court division of the Court of Common Pleas to transfer the collection to Drexel University in 2022. No mention was made of the building, however.
In a 2019 public meeting where the transfer plan was presented, Kelly Lee, then the City’s chief cultural officer, was asked about the planned fate of the building. She declared “the building is critically important to the City,” but added, “It’s not up to the City,” referencing the 1938 deed.
Architectural drawings of 15 S. 7th Street created in 1941 for a Works Progress Administration project under the the Department of Interior’s Historic American Buildings Survey office. | Images: Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress
In 1996, a “declaration of covenants” between the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, represented by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and the City of Philadelphia was signed “to ensure the preservation of the architectural and historical integrity of the Atwater Kent Museum,” defined as “those significant characteristics which qualified the building for entry on the National Register of Historic Places.” It further stipulated that “the grounds around said property will be maintained in the landscaped environment consistent with the historical and architectural character of the property.” Although it committed the City to being responsible for the cost of “maintenance, repair, and administration” of the building, it was limited to a period of 15 years, expiring in 2011.
After the expiration of that agreement, even as the museum was still operating, L&I citations began accruing for deteriorated and unsafe walls in 2014, that were finally repaired the following year. Currently, it appears that eight violations issued in June 2025 remain unresolved, including missing downspouts and FDC locking caps, untested sprinkler and fire alarm systems, and accumulated trash, weeds, and graffiti.
The Atwater Kent Foundation, Inc., currently based in Palm Beach, Florida, lists four Kent descendants as its board of directors and is active as a donor of small grants of a few thousand dollars, primarily to non-profit organizations in the locations where the trustees live. Last year, their Philadelphia recipients were the William Way Community Center, American Youth Hostel, and Asian Americans United.
15 S. 7th Street’s ornate gas lamps that flank the 202-year-old building’s entryway clash with chain link fencing placed by the Department of Parks and Recreation. | Photo: Michael Bixler
“I’ve spoken with [Foundation treasurer] Hewlett Kent once,” said Steinke. “He said all the right things about wanting to see the property put to good use.”
In addition to imploring the City to correct the outstanding L&I violations and prevent further deterioration, the coalition’s letter urged the Parker Administration to establish a process and timeline for determining the building’s future. A few weeks after sending the letter, Steinke reached out to Parker and her staff to follow up on the letter. “I was told they intend to have a meeting about it soon. We expect to hear back,” he said optimistically. “Everyone would like to see it put to good use,” he continued. “From being properly maintained, cleaned up, basic maintenance, up to installing a new use.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Parks and Recreation, which is the responsible entity for the building according to the Office of Property Assessment, replied in an email to a series of questions regarding the building, stating “PPR has plans underway to address the roof drainage and fire protection systems at the former Atwater Kent Museum. In early August, we power washed the rear garden area and continue to clean the rear area and front steps. We are continuing to assess the remaining repairs.” The representative did not address questions about the building’s future.
This is so sad to hear. The garden behind the building also has some history, designed by Marian Tristan Coffin . I maintain that garden for about 10 years when it was still owned by the Atwater Kent museum. Several significant American yellowwood trees dominate the garden.
Drexel is running the same playbook twice.
The Atwater Kent Collection — 133,000 objects the city held in public trust since 1938 — went to Drexel in 2022 after Orphans’ Court overrode the trust, over objections from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and City Council. The Inquirer called it “one of the largest transfers of public to private ownership in memory.” Drexel took the collection, refused the building, and endowed the whole thing at $2 million — about $100,000 a year to steward 133,000 artifacts. Seven years later the building on 7th Street sits looted and vacant, and preservationists are begging the Parker administration to do something. The collection is now officially “a museum without walls”: 20,000 objects digitized, occasional pop-ups at PAFA.
Now the Academy of Natural Sciences. Different legal wrapper — a private 501(c)(3) with its own board and a donor-restricted endowment rather than a public trust — but the same shape. Drexel wants to sell the Parkway building, warehouse 19 million specimens, and pivot to “new opportunities for public display.” Museum without walls, take two.
Both episodes show Drexel absorbing a distressed Philadelphia cultural institution on terms that give the university operational control and the option to shed real estate, leave collections legally protected but functionally warehoused, and shift the visibility problem to a digital portal and traveling loan exhibits. The Atwater Kent is what the Academy will look like in five years if the current framework holds — a well-catalogued online collection, occasional pop-up exhibits at PAFA or elsewhere, and a boarded-up building someone else has to figure out what to do with.
It doesn’t seem Drexel hasa good track record of being a neighborly hometown institution, not just the Atwater and theNatural Academy, the people of Powelton Village are well familiar with