Will Price: Grasping the Architectural Possibilities of the New Life

Bruce Laverty is an adjunct professor at the Pennoni Honors College and the Westphal College of Media Arts and Design of Drexel University. During his 40-year career as the Athenaeum of Philadelphia’s first curator of architecture, he oversaw the collection of thousands of architectural drawings, photographs and manuscripts documenting the career of Will Price, his colleagues, and his successors. Bruce is founding director of the Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project and the Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network. In 2021, he received the James Biddle Award for Lifetime Achievement in historic preservation.

In 1930, architect George Howe, lamented that “America has always been the land of the lone prophet, without much but posthumous honor in their own country.” He believed the first American architects to fully comprehend the “spiritual consequences” of their work were Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan and Will Price. “Their names were known in Europe, while they still remained comparatively obscure among their fellow countrymen.” Wright and Sullivan emerged from the obscurity that Howe decried. But why didn’t Price? Laverty will examine the pivotal, but mostly forgotten, role that Rose Valley resident Will Price played in American art, American architecture, and American self-identity. He will review recent successful efforts to shine a light on this “lone prophet” and discuss what Price can teach us today.