Artwork Details
- Title
- Packard Gates and Lighting Fixtures
- Artist
- Samuel Yellin (1885 – 1940)
- Year
- 1923; installed 1924
- Medium
- Iron and bronze
- Dimensions
- Height 25'; width 15′
Artwork Description
Like other traditional arts, ironworking declined in the latter nineteenth century as factory goods replaced handwork. But in the early years of the twentieth century, Philadelphia’s Samuel Yellin led a wrought-iron revival that influenced many architects as well as artists and craftspeople. Yellin’s work, which ranged from small locks, keys, lamps, and boxes to massive gates, grilles, and ornamental screens, was often embellished with a variety of natural motifs –leaves, blossoms, and bird and animal heads.
The ten-ton gates at the Packard Building are a fine example of his larger commissioned works. Yellin also created the building’s exterior lighting fixtures, which are still in place, and grilles that have been removed. Inside the building, for the offices of the First Pennsylvania Bank, he furnished screens, grilles, gates, railings, lighting fixtures, desks, and benches; but most of these interior items were taken out when the building was renovated in the early 1970s.
Content on this page was adapted from Public Art in Philadelphia by Penny Balkin Bach (Temple University Press, 1992). Bach was the longtime Executive Director of the Association for Public Art, working with the organization from 1980 to 2022.
Artwork Credits
Commissioned by the Pennsylvania Company
Owned by the property owner