{"id":5932,"date":"2013-11-11T00:13:20","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T05:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=5932"},"modified":"2022-11-16T17:51:22","modified_gmt":"2022-11-16T22:51:22","slug":"the-jayne-building-chestnut-streets-woulda-coulda-shoulda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2013\/11\/the-jayne-building-chestnut-streets-woulda-coulda-shoulda\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jayne Building: Chestnut Street\u2019s Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
The Jayne Building, 242-244 Chestnut Street, photograph by Frederick DeBourg Richards, ca. 1859. (PhillyHistory.org\/The Library Company of Philadelphia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Things looked up in 1850. Eight stories up, to be precise. The future seemed bright for Dr. David Jayne, his new building and booming business on Chestnut Street. Jayne\u2019s patent medicines in handy little bottles had been flying off the shelves ever since he figured out how to make people feel good spending money on tonics and pills. If Jayne\u2019s vermifuge<\/a> (for intestinal worms) or his sanative pills<\/a> (for overall health) or his alteratives (to restore normal health) wouldn\u2019t do the trick, there were always his expectorants and ague mixture. And even if you felt just fine, you probably could look<\/em> a little better. For that, Jayne offered an array of oleaginous hair tonics and dyes.<\/p>\n

How did he manage such a level of success? Since 1843, physician and master marketer Jayne had published and distributed free almanacs<\/a> providing health advice to millions of loyal readers across the United States and around the world. Over time, more than half a billion<\/em> copies of Jayne\u2019s Medical Almanac and Guide to Health<\/a> <\/em>were printed and distributed. And beginning in 1851, nearly every one featured the image of his building on its cover.<\/p>\n

The Jayne Building was no ordinary edifice. Only at street level did it seem like others along the lower blocks of Chestnut. But the higher it rose\u2014and it soared to more than 133 feet with its two-story, tin-covered, Gothic tower\u2014the Jayne Building stood taller than any other place of business in the city. Squinting away its Gothic motif, it even looked<\/em> like a skyscraper. Since Louis Sullivan, who later designed\u00a0the real thing<\/a> in Chicago, briefly worked in the architectural offices of Frank Furness across street, there might even have been an influence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Demolition of the Jayne Building, January 2, 1958. Photograph by George A. Eisenman (The Historic American Building Survey\/The Library of Congress)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1950, on the building\u2019s 100th<\/sup> birthday, Charles Peterson publicly\u00a0<\/a>made this claim<\/a>. \u201cIn the annals of the American skyscraper there was, perhaps, nothing more daring as the design for this building…\u201d Peterson proposed it be allowed to stand (without its tower, which had burned in a dramatic fire in 1872) as one of Chestnut Street\u2019s monuments to American history. He had the Jayne Building documented by the Historic American Building Survey<\/a> (Peterson had some pull there, having founded the program in the 1930s), and he talked about it and even distributed a two-page mimeographed handout<\/a>\u00a0to anyone who was game. Peterson bent Louis Mumford\u2019s ear as he researched a series of articles about Philadelphia for The New Yorker<\/a><\/em> in the Spring of 1956.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne is tempted to agree with Mr. Peterson\u2019s conclusion,” wrote Mumford, “that this building must have provided Sullivan with his image of the skyscraper as a \u2018proud and soaring thing\u2019 whose character would be established by stressing vertical lines, for the Jayne Building looks like a crude model of a Sullivan skyscraper of a generation later.\u201d But \u201cwhether this unique and historic structure\u2026should be spared, as a national monument,\u201d Mumford added, \u201cis one of the many difficult questions that confront the directors of that project\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

That \u00a0project,<\/em> of course, was Independence National Historical Park, which favored 18th<\/sup>-century buildings \u00fcber alles. <\/em>And within months wrecking crews were busy taking Jayne down.<\/p>\n

Over the years, city planner Edmund Bacon had monumental disagreements with Peterson. In this case he agreed\u00a0completely.\u00a0Bacon later called the demolition of the Jayne Building \u2018\u2018the worst single act of architectural vandalism that I\u2019ve ever experienced.”<\/p>\n

For\u00a0scars like that, and the regret that followed, there would be no tonics or ointments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Things looked up in 1850. Eight stories up, to be precise. The future seemed bright for Dr. David Jayne, his new building and booming business on Chestnut Street. Jayne\u2019s patent medicines in handy little bottles had been flying off the shelves ever since he figured out how to make people feel good spending money on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}