PSFS Building
Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building is regarded as the first International Style skyscraper built in the U.S. Completed in 1932, it was a radical departure from traditional bank architecture, exploiting the latest technological and structural advances.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Completed in 1932 at the depths of the Great Depression, the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building rose as America's first International Style skyscraper—a sleek tower of glass, steel, and stone that rejected the ornate columns and cornices then expected of a bank. Designed to broadcast modernity and stability, it embraced cutting-edge structural engineering, high-speed elevators, and air conditioning, announcing that the future of American architecture had arrived on Market Street.
Why it matters
The PSFS Building brought European modernism to the American skyline, proving that a functional, unornamented aesthetic could stand as a monument in its own right and shaping decades of skyscraper design to come.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By 1932, Philadelphia was one of the great financial and industrial cities of the country, and Market Street was its commercial spine. But the year the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society opened its new tower, the nation was sinking into the depths of the Great Depression. Banks were failing, breadlines were forming, and the confident boom of the 1920s had collapsed into fear.
That is the strange backdrop against which this building rose. It was conceived in the optimism of the late twenties and completed in the anxiety of the early thirties — a sleek monument to the future finished just as the future seemed most uncertain.
American banks of the era usually dressed themselves in the costume of ancient temples: heavy columns, carved cornices, marble meant to whisper permanence and trust. To choose instead a stripped, modern tower of glass, steel, and stone was a genuinely radical act, a bet that Philadelphians would trust the new rather than the antique.
People & events
The building was the home of the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, an institution devoted to the then-progressive idea that ordinary working people should have a safe place to keep their money. The new tower was meant to express that mission in a modern language rather than a borrowed classical one.
When it was completed in 1932, the design broke sharply with everything expected of a bank. Instead of a stone fortress, it presented clean horizontal bands, broad windows, and an honest expression of its own structure. It was built to exploit the newest engineering and technology of its day rather than to hide them behind ornament.
The result did not just house a bank; it announced a philosophy. Form would follow function, and the machinery of a modern building — its frame, its services, its movement of people — would be part of the beauty, not something to be disguised.
Its place in the American story
The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building is widely regarded as the first International Style skyscraper built in the United States. That makes it a genuine turning point in the American skyline.
The International Style had been taking shape in Europe, championing clean lines, open interiors, and an architecture freed from historical costume. This tower carried that idea across the Atlantic and proved it could stand not as a small experiment but as a full-scale commercial skyscraper on a busy American street.
In doing so it helped open the door for decades of modern design to come. The glass-and-steel towers that would later define American downtowns owe a real debt to the moment when a Philadelphia savings bank decided that a functional, unornamented building could be a monument in its own right.
If you visit
Stand across Market Street and let your eye travel up the tower. What you are looking for is what is missing: no columns, no carved garlands, no imitation temple. Notice instead the long horizontal window bands and the frank, confident geometry of the whole thing.
Think about the year on the marker — 1932 — and imagine this crisp modern shape appearing in a city gripped by the Depression. It would have looked like a message from the future dropped onto a worried street.
It makes a fine first stop on a walking tour of Philadelphia's architecture, a place to start a conversation about how buildings tell us what their builders believed. From here you can wander the surrounding blocks and watch how later towers echo the ideas this one introduced.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- African American Museum in Philadelphia0.5 mi away · 701 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA
- Bridgette Mayer0.5 mi away · 709 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA
- Liberty Bell Center0.5 mi away · 526 Market Street, Philadelphia
- Independence Visitor Center0.5 mi away · 599 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA
- Congress Hall0.5 mi away · Philadelphia, PA
- Independence Hall0.6 mi away · 520 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA
Attractions
- Reading Terminal0.1 mi away
- Chinatown Friendship Gate0.2 mi away · 10th and Arch Street
- One Liberty Observation Deck0.4 mi away
- President's House0.5 mi away
- Liberty Bell0.6 mi away · 526 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA
- The Universal Sphere0.6 mi away
Food & drink
- Burger King0.4 mi away
- Philly Pretzel Factory0.4 mi away
- Munchie’s Cafe0.4 mi away · 728 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA
- El Azteca0.4 mi away
- Park’s Salad Bar0.4 mi away
- Lamberti Pizza & Market0.4 mi away · 707 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA
Places to stay
- Loews Philadelphia Hotelnearby · 1200 Market Street, Philadelphia
- ROOST East Marketnearby
- Philadelphia Marriott Downtownnearby · 1201 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA
- Canopy by Hilton Philadelphia Center Citynearby · 1180 Ludlow Street, Philadelphia, PA
- The Notary Hotel0.1 mi away · 21 North Juniper Street, Philadelphia
- Residence Inn Philadelphia Center City0.1 mi away · 1 East Penn Square, Philadelphia, PA
Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sigma Sound Studios
Philadelphia, PA · est. 2015
When engineer Joseph Tarsia opened Sigma Sound Studios in 1968, he gave a home to what became known worldwide as "The Sound of Philadelphia." Working with producers Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Thom Bell, the studio's lush, string-swept records by The O'Jays, the Stylistics, and others helped define soul music in the 1970s. Its reputation for sonic craft grew so large that artists like David Bowie and Stevie Wonder made pilgrimages to record within its walls.
John Wanamaker (1838-1922)
Philadelphia, PA · est. 1998
John Wanamaker opened his first Philadelphia store in 1861 and, in 1876, unveiled a "new kind of store" that helped invent modern retailing. He pioneered the fixed one-price system and the money-back guarantee, treating customers with a fairness that reshaped how Americans shopped. As U.S. Postmaster General he championed rural free delivery and introduced the commemorative postage stamp.
Siegmund Lubin (1851-1923)
Philadelphia, PA · est. 1994
From an optical shop on this block in 1897, Siegmund Lubin built one of America's first great motion-picture empires — six studios across five states — earning fame as the first movie mogul. A tinkerer and shrewd marketer, he helped turn flickering novelties into a popular entertainment that drew ordinary Americans into darkened theaters. The industry he helped create outgrew him; bankrupt by 1916, he died in obscurity.
Robert Cornelius
Philadelphia, PA · est. 1994
In the spring of 1840, only months after photography was announced to an astonished world, the Philadelphia metallurgist and brass founder Robert Cornelius opened one of its very first commercial studios here. Working with chemist Paul Beck Goddard, he found ways to shorten exposure times dramatically — the breakthrough that made it possible to sit for a portrait without holding still for agonizing minutes. Cornelius had already made himself one of the first people ever photographed.