A last look at PAFA before all is zipped and spiffed up
A $13 million facelift is underway at the Frank Furness and George Hewitt-designed lavish Victorian structure at Broad and Cherry Streets.
Some say that the greatest piece of art in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is the building itself — PAFA’s lavish Victorian structure at Broad and Cherry Streets.
These days, much of its interior is unrecognizable.
PAFA’s grand staircase inside the 1876 building remains impressive, but nearby galleries and other spaces are currently shrouded in darkness and covered in protective materials as a 15-month renovation project proceeds. Most of the art is gone, with a few pieces of remaining sculpture scattered and wrapped in plastic.
Perhaps most startlingly, you can stand in parts of the building’s central hall and look straight up beyond where ceilings once were — into the vast, scorching attic, and to skylights above that flood the space with diffused light.
We slipped into the building for a tour with Ed Poletti, PAFA’s special projects manager, before all is zipped up, spiffed up, and the rare views are once again concealed.
PAFA is well into $13 million in work on the building, designed by famed Philadelphia architects Frank Furness and George Hewitt. Fundraising has entered the final stretch, with $2 million more to go. The overarching goal is to keep at bay the enemy of art, moisture and water, and to provide stable environmental conditions for PAFA’s own collection and visiting works.
“The challenge we had before was we had a lot of piping,” said Poletti, “which our museum director always hated because pipes break, pipes leak.” PAFA’s HVAC system was installed in 1976, and creating uniform temperature and humidity throughout the building was difficult.
Now the entire HVAC system is being replaced, and, by the end of the project, PAFA aims to have resurfaced the walls of all of the galleries with drywall.
The renovation work has opened up secret parts of the building, revealing its structural bones and other features of the original design — if just temporarily.
New air handlers are on the way. They will rest upon an enormous new steel structure in the attic — the units hoisted up through a space just above the central hallway. Once the units are in place, the opening between the gallery floor and attic will be closed up. The air handlers will sit on rubber casters to minimize vibrations, and acoustical material is expected to dampen mechanical noise that could otherwise seep into the museum spaces.
PAFA’s historic building was both innovative and influential, and the current HVAC project has highlighted original systems for providing light and air. High above the galleries, a series of louvers used to be opened with pulleys to move air up and out of the building. “That’s how they used to ventilate the building prior to 1976. That was the air-conditioning system,” said Poletti. “Very high-tech.”
Natural light has always been used in the building — brought down from skylights at the top of the structure and filtered through laylights below. The laylights have been cleaned and will go back in place, though artificial lighting will now be installed in places.
To the public, the Furness and Hewitt building is known mostly as a museum, but PAFA has always distinguished itself as both a school and a museum — two sides of the same institution that share certain artistic traditions. The Academy, founded in 1805, still bills itself as the oldest school and museum in the U.S., even as it revamps its educational programs. The school’s cast studio — a working 19th-century relic and continuing inspiration to artists — has sat quiet during the renovations.
After the building’s new HVAC is installed, the system will need to run for a couple of months “to get the building condition back to the temperature and humidity we need,” said Poletti, “and then we’ll hopefully bring the art back in the first quarter and get set up for our opening in 2026.”
The project faces a firm deadline. “A Nation of Artists,” a joint exhibition with the Philadelphia Museum of Art that includes works from the Middleton Family Collection, is slated to open in the spring of 2026, just as the nation celebrates its 250th birthday.